I’m waiting on Curley and Frazer at the end of the Carnhill Stage. It’s the Saturday before the Donegal International Rally.
Next week this same place will be a hive of activity and will be right in the middle of the three day event. Earlier yesterday morning I messaged Conor Curley to see if he was out doing his recce for the rally next week. A while later I got a reply, ‘Yes Brian we are Donegal, I’m in Downings”, in rallying terms around this time of year that means he is doing the notes for the famous Atlantic Drive Stage. I reply with a message hoping to meet up with the crew somewhere before they wrap up for the day.
In the Rally programme for the 2023 season at No 45, A class 14 Ford Escort MK 2 is listed. The crew are Conor Curry and Nigel Frazer, it is not the first time they did the rally and indeed it’s not the first time that I did a wee feature on these two lads.
Twenty years ago this weekend we decided to resurrect that old famous rally bulletin called the Ballyraine Bugle and in the third edition on the Saturday evening of the rally we ran with Curley and Frazer on the front page with the heading “The Boys are Back in Town”.
The photo was taken on the Knockalla Stage as the crew three-wheeled their MK 2 Escort around the second hairpin. As luck would have it this Saturday 20 years on I was lucky enough to find an old copy of the Bugle complete with autographs. The two boys are rallying for over 20 years now, always in a Mk 2 Escort. They have kept a very famous team name in the limelight over the lifetime of the Donegal International Rally.
Conor and Nigel going through the road book as the complete their recce on one of Donegal most famous stages, Carnhill on Saturday evening. Photo Brian Mc Diad
An old copy of the Ballyraine Bugle from 2003 which I edited and produced which has Conor and Nigel on the front page as they climb the Knockala Stage on the Donegal International Rally. Photo By Brian McDaid.
The two boys’ fathers, Cathal Curley and Austin Frazer were a very successful team before even the Donegal International Rally started and both of them became two team players of a different type when rallying first started in Donegal, Austin became the first ever Clerk of the Course for the Donegal International Rally and Cathal Curley become the first ever driver to win the Donegal driving a BMW.
A phone call back and the service is poor in the hills but we arrange to meet at the end of the Carnhill Stage. On my way there as I head through Ballyare which is on this stage. I pass over the Barrack Bridge, which is a famous spot on the stage. A bridge where Cathal Curley and Austin Frazier clipped in the Lancia Stratos in the seventies and just for good measure like chips of the old block Conor and Nigel also clipped the very same Barrack Bridge years after. I get Drumman National School and a traffic cone marks the spot just past the crossroads to where the flying finish has been moved forward. As I’m waiting to meet Conor and Nigel, other crews that are coming to the finish and making adjustments to their notes.
Then it’s Curley and Fraser as they pull up along the school wall and slowly emerge from their recce car. They have spent the day in the car going over the Saturday and Sunday stages. The boys chat about the stages they have navigated over, Conor has a new Mk 2 ready for Donegal and is looking forward to the rally weekend. This year the rally falls on the 16th 17th and 18, and on the years that it falls on the 19th, 20th and 21st Conor also celebrates his birthday that weekend, Conor was born in 1974 on the Saturday of the Donegal International Rally, that was the third year in a row that his father Cathal won the even so the Donegal rally weekends are always a big weekend for the Curley family.
Donegal Winner of the Circuit of Donegal in 1973 Cathal Curley and Terry Harryman Tom Fitzpatrick T.D. Minister for Lands made the presentations. also pictured is Austin Frazer who was normally the Co-Driver for Curley but on this occasion he was the Clerk of the Course in Donegal
Cathal Curley and Austin Frazer with their BMW winners of the Killarney Rally.in the 1970’s
Nigel Frazer is a sports writer for the Impartial Reporter and also works as a recruitment manager for the national employment agency in his native Co. Fermanagh but this weekend hIs pencils will switch from jotting down pitman shorthand to adjusting pacenotes as he moves his office into the recce car this weekend and then moves it into the passenger’s seat of Curley’s Mk 2 Escort for three long days next weekend where he will manage the team like all good navigators do along with calling out the invaluable pace notes for each stage. and let Conor get on with the job of keeping the Millinton powered Escort between the Donegal ditches.
Nigel’s voice is a carbon copy of his father Austin’s. For me, Austin Frazer’s voice calling out notes for drivers like the great Bertie Fisher or taking an interview for TV when both Fisher and Frazer took time out of rallying and worked as a top rallying safety team in the eighties to ensure that rallying continued. Austin Frazer’s voice is the single voice I always will associate with rallying and especially the Donegal Rally down through the years.
Conor and Nigel are now soon joined by a few other competitors that pull up at the end of stage to have a yarn and hear the craig.
As I head off to look for a good spot to watch yet another Donegal more crew come streaming through the end of the stage, some are here in Donegal for the very first time and other have gone from standing on ditches to competing or even organising the Donegal Rally Conor and Nigel have made many friends in Donegal growing up in the two rallying families like the Curley’s and Frazer’s they have made family friends in Donegal over the generations
Everyone will be the best of friends and want to spend the longest time in Donegal, that it until they don their helmets. Then it’s the least amount of time on the stage that counts.
Cathal Curley was a three time winner of the Donegal and Austin won the event twice but not in the same team, Austin’s first win came with Billy Coleman in the Stratos in 1977 and then with Bertie a decade later. As luck would have it I came across a great BBC interview with Curley and Frazer in the seventies when they were one of the first teams outside the works team to drive the famous Lancia Stratos as they prepared to defend their win on the Circuit of Ireland title from the year before.
Here’s to all the crew working on their notes this weekend and in the days before the rally starts next weekend. It’s an event that is now the best rally in Ireland and the only three day one still running, and on Sunday evening at the front door of the Mount Errigal Hotel mort history will be created when another year of the Donegal will pass and along with it another chapter of rallying history.
Happy Motoring Folks
