News - Rally of Melbourne 1

Team News from MRT

On Our Way to Melbourne
Its late and the guys are loading the car on the trailer as I type.

We have had a relatively calm preparation for the next (second last) round of the Australian rally Championship. The recent event (part of the NSW State rally Series) was our last rush! That now seems ages ago! Returning from that event (Batemans Bay) we simply had to work on some new R/D ideas, some from testing at Batemans and some that have been in the "pipeline" for several months. Unfortunately late this afternoon our biggest move failed to eventuate and we will continue with what we have, HOWEVER we do believe we found a small gremlin that may be a cure of an ongoing bug with the car all year.

Based on this and the fact that its really our first event in the car with no crash repairs to have had done, the team is starting to feel comfortable with the car AND so is the driver!

We are car 8 at this event, our stage times in Coffs Harbour (prior to our "little off") has had a large impact on our seeding co efficient rating moving us up into single digits, FINALLY! (more info on this see www.cams.com.au ).

What a great chance it will be to only have seven cars in front of us!
4 factory works cars, a semi factory Golf kit car, Dean Herridge (WRX) and Stewart Reid....EVO 6 Lancer.

We plan to have a steady run, we can't afford any more mistakes, my wife tells me!
I drew the short straw (again) so have to drive the team truck down to Melbourne (900 km [12hrs] South of Sydney for our OS friends) and will be taking Lisette (wife) and kids, Hayley 2 1/2 and Oscar 13 months.

On Thursday we will attend the shakedown session at the fantastic Debortoli winery in the Yarra Valley East of Melbourne. This simply has to be the best rally stage in Australia! We will be giving rides to some corporate guests and running in the gearbox.

Thursday nite the team will do turbo scrutiny where the event scrutineers check the turbo has the right size restrictor (34mm) and basically prep and clean the car for full scrutiny on Friday. Andrew and my self will be up early Friday to go and check our pace notes, we plan to drive the course 2 - 3 times and check the stages that are the same as last year and make some (SERIOUS) amendments based on my little mistake in Coffs!

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