There’s a sense of déjà vu!

A charity event will see 150 historic rallying and supercars leave Little Island on 9 September and embark on a 140 mile route.

Taking in many of the classic Cork 20 and West Cork Rally special stages, Déjà vu Cork ’23 is the 9th event in the series which has raised more than €300,000 for charity.

The non-competitive rally will include a lunchtime parade through the streets of Clonakilty and will culminate with a gala dinner at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Little Island.

All proceeds from the event will go to Critical, the emergency medical response charity.

The charity provides pre-hospital emergency care to critically ill and injured patients in their local communities through its network of volunteer emergency medical responders.

Micheál Sheridan, CEO of Critical said: “Our volunteers are tasked to serious incidents by the National Ambulance Service. We’ve kitted out their Critical Care response vehicles with a specialist medical kit essentially bringing the emergency department to the patient.

“The equipment, which is entirely funded by donors and wonderful fundraising events like this, allows our critical and advanced care doctors to use their many years of experience to perform complex and often life saving medical procedures at the scene.

“We’re honoured to be chosen by Déjà vu as the beneficiaries of their Cork rally as it will help us to expand our services to even more communities across the country. We’re often called to road traffic incidents and fundraising events like this help us to bring hope to people when time is critical,” Mr Sheridan added.

It costs an average of €25,000 to establish an advanced level volunteer doctor in the community, and €120,000 to put a new critical care response vehicle on the road.

Déjà vu Motorsport was created in 2016 by 2 retired motor sport enthusiasts, Alan ‘Plum’ Tyndall, the creator of motorsports TV programme RPM and former rally co-driver Beatty Crawford.

Alan said: “We are delighted to support Critical, the emergency medical response charity. Many people will know it as the charity responsible for setting up the Irish Community Air Ambulance and proving how vital that service is. Now the priority is bringing critical and advanced levels of care to more communities.

“As they are using specially prepared cars for their innovative response vehicles, it seems appropriate that our enthusiastic motorsport orientated entrants will be supporting this very worthwhile initiative.”