Team News from MRT

Batemans Bay Roundup...............

Held on the weekend of the 5th August, the Bay Stages lived up to its reputation of testing cars and crew.

The MRT crew of Brett Middleton and Andrew Benefield, (car 1) started car 5 on the road, after the Ballet of the first five cars resulted in Miles Sandy scoring (car 1), Campbell Waller VR4 (car 2), Howard Grove Lancer (car 3), Craig Stallard Subaru WRX (car 4).

Sandy's position on the road was a plumb spot, as the roads were extremely Dusty, and even at 2 minute intervals the turbo 4wd cars lifted a lot of dust into the still afternoon air. SS one and the top 5 cars all were on the pace, however the crew of Stallard and Jesse, went off the road heavily and collided with a tree 3 km from the end of Stage. The crash being very similar to that of MRT;'s in QLD, however a little more off side, resulting in the chassis taking much more impact. Both crew are OK, however Co-driver Graham (a close friend) is recuperating at home pending a final cat scan and X ray results for crushed Vertebrae .

Flying Penrith young gun, Mark Thompson set fastest time in his Dads Lancer Evo 5, at 7.04, Sandy and Grove on 7.12, MRT did a 7.14 after slowing towards the end of stage with mechanical gremlins.

MRT drove back to "The Bay" and re-joined the event on SS 4 Quart Pot, a 30km blast down the southern side of inland town of Nelligen and finishing near the highway South of Bateman's Bay. This stage was a ripper, a rough beginning ending up in fast open roads through farm country. The Impreza set 10th fastest time, even though, we had self inflicted Clutch problems....We did the last 20 KM with no clutch at all!

Miles Sandy and Rachel Bruty were setting a strong pace, leading crews, Grove, Waller, and a hard charging Thomson and veteran Steve Annabel in his VR4 And so the event continued, the top crews continuing to press stage times whilst some crews further down the field suffering the results of the known bay Stages, sucker type corners that catch the unwary, whilst others suffered mechanical failures.

Unfortunately a charging Mark Thompson came to an end, whilst in dust he misread a corner and hit a tree head on, he will be a force to watch when he returns with a repaired car adn revived driving experience.

Campbell Waller in his VR4, car 2 on the road was pressing Sandy as was Grove, recovering from an earlier flat tyre, Waller ran wide on the famous "River Road" and stayed bogged to DNF, whilst Grove was not quite up to the pace of Sandy's WRX in his ageing Lancer, Howard's local knowledge and strong experience allowed him to set some rapid stage times, but couldn't recover the 4 minutes lost with the flat tyre.

Sandy now is in a strong position to build on a repeat State series win, the next event , Bathurst a venture back in time with a 60km stage to test crew and car! Typically stages these days are rarely more than 30.....

OFF THE CUFF
We continued to test more ideas with the WRX, including tyres and suspension settings, all gaining a bit more vital knowledge for the last two rounds of the ARC.

The competition at the Bay and the NSW State Championship is pretty competitive, plus with such large number of entries, the risk of a small mistake means you drop down the field, FAST! Andrew and myself we very happy with the times we were setting, given the large amount of dust, and that we had no way of winning (we were lucky to be allowed to continue, by the event director) we effectively were "not" competing even though we were receiving stage times, that's why we didn't appear on the results after SS1.

There was no need to risk the car given 2 1/2 weeks to go to the Aussie Duct Melbourne (ARC) Rally. Our plans were to set a consistent pace and achieve some good testing KM. Which we did!

The end result was we came away with a positive result, learnt some more about the car, and feeling confident for the next ARC event. the car is a little quicker, has some new parts, and we still have some more do do.

Every time we work on the car it is improving and losing weight as we slowly move away from its original Group N specifications, there are more alloy bolts than ever know and we have replaced more weighty components with light weight carbon fibre parts (IE we fitted new mirrors as well as some dash components)

The new gearbox cooler works well (although it needs some fine tuning) and the temp sender was interesting to note and this has added to our growing list of data that we are gathering on the car.

Hey and its even MORE fun to drive!

Final results:

for complete results
www.nswrally.com/BayStages2000SS10.htm  

for more info on the SGI NSW state rally series visit
www.nswrally.com 

for more info on the Australian rally series visit
www.Rally.com.au 

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EMAIL: info@mrtrally.com.au  PHONE: (02) 9767 4545. 

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