Ready to Test - Batemans Bay
After setting solid stage times in the last round of the Australian Rally Championship, the MRT crew of Brett Middleton and Andrew Benefield, look forward to this weekends rally in their Sanyo supported Subaru Impreza STi.
The Bay Stages rally, the 4th round of the NSW State Rally series, is an event the team always look forward to. "This was one of the very first rallies I ever ran, and we have been coming back almost every year since" Brett said. Its the "home" event for my car Club, (North Shore Sporting Car Club), so its great to be amongst friends.
The crew chose to compete at this event as it allows them to do some more vital testing in setting up their Subaru WRX Sti. Facing a steep learning curve with the 4wd turbo machine, the team have had their share of set backs and this has impacted on the teams testing. "The Bay Stages allows easy servicing and is a very compact rally, so we will be using every chance to try some new settings" Andrew Benefield said.
MRT exclusively run Falken tyres, and for this event they will be testing every possible tyre combination that they can with the rims they have available, some non Falken brands as well! The team found some new suspension settings at Coffs Harbour that allowed the team to push a little harder that reflected in their 4th outright position prior to going off the road and rolling. "I was very pleased with our times in the last event, however I still believe we can do better, the roll set us back a bit, but I have not lost my commitment, nor has the team, they have put in big effort to be ready for this event. Including the crew at Premier Panel beating and Keith Byrn," Brett said.
The team expect to capitalise on this for this weekends event and come away with some new ideas use in the next round of the Australian Rally Championship in 3 weeks time in Melbourne. "Obviously we would like to win at at Batemans Bay, however our focus is the ARC, and if we need to sacrifice some results then we will, all in a bid to try new ideas" Brett said. "you sometimes have to take some risks in ideas to learn what works, if that means taking one step back for two steps forward then so be it. It would be great to come away with a good result or even a win, this would give us a excuse to continue with the N SW series, but we will have to wait and see" he added.
Cars are on display at the main street from 9am and 1st car (MRT is car one) starts the rally at 12.pm
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