It was expected to be a victory cruise by Eamonn Boland but the Rally Isle of Man hasn’t turned out that way.

Instead, the Irish Tarmac champion-elect was in second place last night at the end of the second leg, well over a minute behind leader Mark Higgins.

True, Higgins is a Manxman, a three-time British champion and a triple winner of his home international but he is driving an elderly production Subaru N11 against Boland’s state-of-the-art WRC Subaru S12B – the only one of its kind in the field.

Boland had lost over 40 seconds on Friday night when he spun during a rain-storm on Friday night but he was expected to breeze back into the lead during yesterday’s long second leg.

Instead, he was regularly beaten by Higgins and by the production Mitsubishi of Guy Wilks. Indeed, Boland would have been behind Wilks, too, had the British champion not smashed a wheel of the Lancer when he went off on stage eight, dropping three minutes.

Wilks was back up to fourth last night, 20 seconds behind the other Higgins, Mark’s brother David in a Subaru.

But there was bitter disappointment for Wilks’ team-mate, Ulsterman Phillip Morrow, who was reported to have crashed out of fifth place on stage 14.

His exit helped to promote three other Irish drivers up the leaderboard, Darren Gass to sixth and Jonny Greer up to ninth, both in Mitsubishis, with Brian O’Mahony sandwiched between in seventh in his Renault Clio. John McGlaughlin was 13th, concentrating on finishing following the exit of his main Tarmac championship production rival Kevin Kelleher with clutch failure.