The battle for the Irish national championship may be over, but that will do little to lessen the intensity of the fight for victory on the Donegal Harvest Rally tomorrow.

Patrick Elliott, having already secured the title for the first time with two rounds to spare, heads the entry list for the event, while his closest rivals over the season, Niall Maguire and Kevin Barrett, seeded at two and four, all in Subarus.

Sandwiched in at No.3 and adding spice to the Donegal finale is Kevin Lynch, who steps down from the international Tarmac championship to take on the national front-runners.

Disappointed with his performance – or, more accurately, the performance of his S12B Subaru - on the Ulster International where he started favourite but lost out to new Tarmac champion Eamonn Boland, Lynch has had new suspension fitted to the Impreza and takes it to Donegal as a competitive testing exercise.

Having come close to winning the Donegal International back in June, the triple Northern Ireland champion from Dungiven seems certain to end the season with at least one Donegal victory under his belt.

Seamus Leonard and local man PJ McDermott head an all-Subaru top six while Shaun Gallagher trades in the C2 Citroen which carried him to joint second in the Junior World championship for a Group N Mitsubishi to make a rare home appearance.

He’ll face stiff competition in the production category, not least from former Tarmac Group N champion Garry Jennings and Allan Ring, also in Mitsubishis.

Despite these tough economic times, there is an over-subscribed entry list for an event which starts from rally headquarters, the Nesbitt Arms, Ardara, tomorrow morning.

Meanwhile, the pace was expected to be more sedate on the Circuit of Ireland Retro Trial which began from Hillsborough today.

It takes crews, who include multi-British rallycross champion Dermot Carnegie and autotest champion Eamonn Byrne in much older machines, all the way down through Cavan and Mullingar to Kenmare on Sunday via a series of driving, navigation and old-fashioned regularity tests in classic cars.