4th April. Steep Learning Curve For Middleton

Team News from MRT

4th April. Steep Learning Curve For Middleton

The opening round of the Australian Rally Championship proved a difficult affair for MRT and Brett Middleton as they come to grips with the ex-Subaru Australia Impreza WRX. Several minor problems, flat tyres and difficult conditions resulted in a pair of disappointing placings however Brett is quick to point out that coming from a two-wheel drive Honda Civic to a factory built 4-wheel drive will take some time.

Middleton struggled throughout the opening day, extremely slippery conditions and large amounts of loose gravel made driving extremely difficult. Expecting hard based stages the Middleton Rally Team packed a large amount of Falken D-Pattern tyres for this event, however conditions proved that a more open block pattern would be needed, the required C-Pattern ideal to the situation. The only problem being that the team had only brought one set of C's for the entire rally, the crew forced to hand cut wider grooves into the D's in an attempt to shift the gravel more quickly.

"I was scared witless out there today," commented Brett at the end of Heat 1. "It was so slippery and I'm still not feeling 100% comfortable in the car so that makes it very difficult to drive fast without driving straight off the road!"

The team also dropped time to 4 punctures during the weekend, draining the tyre reserve for the following stages. On both day 1 and 2 Middleton and co-driver Andrew Benefield were forced to pull over onto the side of the road mid-stage to change tyres, dropping at least 5 minutes each time. "I'm trying to learn the car, trying to learn how to set it up for the corners properly and I keep ending up wide as I exit the corner. In doing so I'm running wide into the loose gravel and that's were we've been getting the punctures!" exclaimed Brett.

It was later diagnosed a suspected failed Shock absorber may be the culprit of the treacherous handling of the car, "it was like driving on half inflated tyres, "Brett said "every time we went around a corner, most often to the left, the car would step out sideways, no tyre can cope with that" he added.

The crew started Heat 2 strongly, Brett coming to grips on the slippery surfaces eventually moving into 6th place behind the factory teams of Possum Bourne, Neal Bates, Cody Crocker and Ed Ordynski and just behind former Formula 2 rival Dean Herridge in his new Impreza WRX. However, another puncture and problem's with the right rear strut dropped Brett back down the field to finish in 16th place. "The most important thing is that we finished the rally and that we've learnt more and more about the car.

Canberra is the next Round and I've always enjoyed the Canberra roads. We'll have heaps of tyres and we'll go out and have some more fun!"

From Brett's seat!

Wow, what a week, earley Recce' due to the events new location (3hrs south of Perth) forced us all to leave a day earlier, Andrew and I travelled south on arrival to Perth, to exciting (sleepy) town of Nannup, the hub of the rally. (60 km inland from Busselton)

An early start Thursday to note the roads (3 times) from scratch, (its all new), [in the past we often have last years notes to change or add to.....] Our first drama was we were not allowed to use the 4wd car we had, as the organisers felt the tyres were too "aggressive" 3 hrs later and many valuable hours we were in a VT commodore and on the way.

Well what a surprise we had, my worse fears arise with a (very) bad choice of tyres (we had all the wrong ones!) and the roads were very tricky, meaning, hard to 'read' and many corners to catch unwary crews.

By the time we got back to Perth it was 9.30 pm, and the guys had already had the car checked and passed thru scrutiny, (with the added hassle of removing the turbo (again) to be re sealed!)) Up early Friday for pre event shake down just East of Perth, to give the car a run and bed in some pads, get some photos and video for ch 10...

Back in time to do some hurried repairs to a cracked seat mount courtesy of Leigh Hynes and Rev Limit Motorsport and Guru Welding (thanks guys) then get the car washed and into Perth's Forest place for the grand launch....

It was great to see the usual familiar faces of crews and teams with their new and some old cars from last year, Possum's car had a big birthday, with a full rebuild and trick new prodrive Diff, Neal Bates had burned the midnight oil over Xmas to be present with a freshened up Corolla, Cody and Greg in their new ver. 5 Group N WRX as was Ed and Ian Stewart in their brightly painted (new) Red Lancer...plus all the other regulars..

We left the ramp (with thousands of public present) and promptly drove around the corner and put the car on the trailer for the 3 hr drive South!.

Heat one
Saturday was bright and very sunny, (not my favourite rally weather!) a nervous driver and Andrew set off to gain some confidence in the new cars real test....Well the 1st stage did the opposite!, I was scared witless, wrong tyres, wrong shock settings, a "Green" driver and the treacherous WA (bauxite) ball bearing gravel making my job 10 times harder!

Anyway we pressed on gaining experience as we went, our 1st flat tyre was all my fault, with a wide exit, nudging a grader berm and popping a front left tyre, 3 minutes later we were on our way only to find we dropped more like 5 minutes to the pace of the others that we should have been compared to!

The rest of the heat (one) we tested settings tyres and made the best of our position....

Heat Two
Wound up with confidence and a scratch less car, we set off,,,we were satisfied with our improving stage times and were in 6th outright, when our 2nd flat tyre occurred, my fault, trying too hard I clipped a large rock and a minute later Andrew and I were practising our sped wheel change routine again ,and we went from hero to zero, down to 12th outright.....

The last two flat tyres were pure bad luck from a badly handling car that we can only focus on shock rates, we checked toe, camber, etc etc...

No matter how hard I tried I could not keep the car from going side ways which exposed the sidewalls of the tyres to all the rocks, (like driving a super powerful rear wheel drive car!)

With no way of curing the problem, all we could do was reduce our corner speed and back off, to save more flat tyres.....

In the end we finished with no probs the car was great and with every event I get more confidence and more amazed at its capabilities.

Interesting notes on the event:
MRT's Fastest recorded speed 190 km/h (I chickened out on this one as well!)
PBM were on new Pirelli tyres which "apparently" worth 0.5 sec per km (and that's a lot)
The Pirelli signage on the PBM cars has a number beside it, (also on the Prodrive cars) this number represents the outright wins, PBM's team now will be 32!
MRT went thru 24 tyres on the w/e..

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