Carlow Car Club held their AGM and Club Championship prize giving in the Lord Bagenal Hotel recently. There was a large turn out of both new and existing members on the night. In his address club President Fintan O'Neill congratulated everyone involved in the club for their hard work and dedication to the club in the last year.

A special congratulation was given to all the Club Championship winners and all club members who had success throughout the year in various events and championships throughout the country.

A ballot was taken on the night to vote in the board of directors, 7 people were nominated and only six positions were available. The newly elected directors were John Meaney, Robert Corrigan, Charlotte Egan, Ken Treacy, Seamus Hobbs and Donal Meaney. Denise Ryan remains on as club secretary, Catherine Kelly as PRO, Patrick Doyle assistant PRO while John Meaney remains club treasurer for another year.

The awards for the Club Championship were presented directly after the AGM; the championship has been running for many years now and is open to all club members. It comprises of a total of 9 club events with 6 counting, a variety of events are included ranging from Rally, Sprints, Rallycross and Autocross, it is a very challenging championship because of the mixture of events involved.

This year's overall winner was Tullow man Shane Hade, the dark horse of the championship Shane came out on tops beating 2 times championship winner Noel O'Brien by just 1 point to have his name etched on the Championship silverware.

Early in the championship the battle was on between previous winner Noel O'Brien and newcomer to the championship Paul Doyle but this all changed after round 8 the Autocross event, O'Brien and Doyle did not compete in this event while Shane did and scored max points for doing so, having secured max points in his class for all the previous events this left him just one point behind O'Brien on the leaderboard.

It was down to the wire for the final event of the championship, the Rallycross, but it was on this event Shane showed his true driving potential by scoring max points, securing him the championship title. Shane has been competing for the past number of years in his self prepared 1300 Suzuki Swift and has gone from strength to strength.

Shane plans to move up a gear this year having recently purchased a 1600 Toyota Corolla. This will see him move to the highly competitive class 10 and there is sure to be plenty of sideways action ahead. Shane plans to have his newly acquired mount ready in time for the Carlow Stages Rally.

Congratulations to all the Championship award winners - Class 1: Albert Dalton, Class 2, 1st Noel O'Brien, 2nd Aidan Perse, 3rd William Cecil, And Class 3: Emmet Watchorn, Thomas Rafferty and Pat Lee. Class 4: Paul Doyle, Billy Byrne, Andrew McCabe, Class 5 the triplets of the club Pat Murphy, Jack Deegan and Patrick Keogh.

The club's next event is the annual sprint in Tynagh and entries are available online.