Ronan to take the podium at the ITCC

Fergal Ronan, a talented member of the Irish Touring car championships discussed how his love of go karts and motocross led to his passion for cars and his competitive edge. “I have been involved in motorsports in one way or another all my life really, I first started competitively racing go karts at the age of 8”

The Irish Touring Car Championship is Ireland’s newest and most exciting race series. With capacity grids of 30 cars already witnessed in its inaugural 2010 season, the ITCC has been a huge success for Irish motorsport and is set for even bigger things in 2011 with four races per day and over 40 cars competing.
The series has not only attracted a host of newcomers to the sport but also some of the sports’ most respected saloon car racers and champions, with more joining every round.
“Recently I started racing in the ITCC, it’s been running since 2009 and I took part competitively last year and we came forth overall in the season, which was a pretty good outcome for our first year.”

Ronan discussed his excitement for the new sport and told of how he heard about the ITCC through online forums. “It just sounded like a good race series from the word go”.
The ITCC has a range of cars that compete including the Tuning Factory’s teams driver, Barry Rabbit, racing their Honda CRX.

Fergal has been competing in the ITCC in a Citroen Saxo VTS, a car in which he has a lot of confidence, “it’s fairly heavily modified from your average Saxo, its running about a 160bph, there’s a lot of preparation that goes into getting a car ready for racing, it has to meet strict regulations, safety regulations”

The sport has come a long way since its set up in 2009 and has since gained a lot of attention in the press, for the ITCC itself, along with its drivers. Ronan believes that this year will be the toughest year yet, “Well there’s a lot of new drivers this year, the grid is nearly 50 cars, so there is a lot of new competitors and last years competitors have done a lot with their cars, so its going to be a lot harder this year”.

But Ronan has no plans to quit his fight for a podium finish against the likes of top racers Barry Rabbit and last years ITCC winner, Martin Tracy “Our car has come along way and I would think I have bettered my own driving skills from last year, obviously I would like to improve on last years place, but if I can aim to get on the podium, I would be more than happy”.