Nutt thrilled with Rally title

Michael Nutt from Castlerock won class one at the Northern Ireland Rally Championship when he competed for the first time last year and has now clinched the title for the second year in succession and will receive his trophy early in the New Year.

“I was delighted when the team won last year but it was thrilling to go out and win the title for a second year,” he said.

“We were 14 points in front of the next driver.”

Nutt, a sales manager with Toyota at Campsie near Londonderry has experienced rally man, Jimmy McKeefrey as his co-driver in the team Donnelly and Taggart 2000cc Honda car.

Nutt has only been rallying for three years but the Nutt-McKeefrey team is now certainly one to be reckoned with.

To win the title the team scored maximum points on three of this year’s rounds, the Mourne Rally, Kirkiston and the Ulster Rally which incorporates a round of the Northern Ireland and British championships and Irish Tarmac championship.

He started off in his first season driving an historic Mini which he inherited from his father Dessie winning his class in the first rally he entered. After that he switched to production series group N cars which have all the standard features plus additional safety equipment to make them eligible for production series rallying.

The switch was made then to the Donnelly and Taggart team as the company was awarded the Honda franchise. The team now rallies with a Honda Civic type R. “It’s an ideal car for rallying because of its reliability,” concluded Nutt.