May’s Dunlop Motorsport Ireland Young Racing driver of the Month Niall Murray left Mondello Park disappointed after a challenging weekend at the Kildare venue. With a brace of fifth place finishes, Murray has shown so far this season that despite being a Formula Ford rookie, he is easily capable of being a podium regular. Niall made the trip to Kirkistown for an out of championship test weekend to try and figure out where their missing pace had gone at Mondello. Having discovered an issue with his shocks just before the event, Murray went into qualifying hoping this would see him back up the order. Much to the delight of both Niall and his Murray Motorsport team, it appeared that Niall was now right back up there and finished qualifying fourth, a mere two tenths of a second off outright pole. An elated Murray approached the race and with nothing to lose as this event was not part of his main Irish championship. A superb start off the line put Niall up to third coming into Kirkistown’s first corner, Colonial. Quickly this was followed by a superb move around the outside of Kevin O’Hara to move into second behind season long pace setter Ivor McCullough. Niall quickly tucked in behind McCullough waiting for any opportunity to make his leap to the front over the next sequence of laps. However Kevin O’Hara was now back in the mix and Murray was unable to defend the straight line pace of the Dunlop Motorsport Ireland car and was forced to relinquish his second position. O’Hara now started to battle with McCullough for the lead but Niall was aware that O’Hara was carrying a ten second jump start penalty. The trio were running right with each other for several laps before McCullough broke away and Niall, aware of his penalty, tucked in behind O’Hara. Crossing the line Murray finished the race third on the road but second on the results sheet. Speaking after the race, a clearly delighted Murray described the exciting race, “very happy with our progress this weekend. We’re not planning to contest all the rounds in the Northern Irish Championship, so we were mainly using this as a test to see if the problem we found made a difference. Our pace was right there and we expect to be fighting for wins from now on. Massive well done to my team Murray Motorsport with four wins this weekend with both our Ginetta drivers and Erik in the ITCC. Thanks to all my sponsors Murray Motorsport, Schroth, SuperB, CL Brakes and P1 Digital.”