News - MRT rolls out of Saxon Safari

The Citibank ready credit crew of Brett Middleton and Andrew Benefield, crashed out of Heat One of the Tasmanian ARC rd 4 The Saxon Safari Today.

After setting some promising stage times, the crew were 7th outright after Special Stage 3, in a tight battle, 4 seconds behind Mark Pedder (Group A Lancer), whom was only 6 seconds behind Dean Herridge (Group N Impreza) with the four factory cars in front. MRT also had a 3 second lead over young gun Mark Thomson (Group N Lancer) and a further 10 seconds to Stuart Warren (Group N Lancer).

We were comfortable with our time on the "DEC" super stage at 1.07 seconds, and this was after I missed a gear on the finish straight, going into the next two stages I was very happy with the car and after a steep learning curve, I was finally happy with the way I was driving the car.

Andrew and I had decided to play it safe and watch for the (many) rocks and ensure that we did not push too hard. even thought the "sprint" format of the ARC Super series means crews have to be on the pace, you can afford to be careful, just not too careful!

Even though I was driving within my limits, we smacked a huge rock on SS2 and was amazed we did not puncture, the Falken tyres we are now using are very good and well suited to the Tasmanian roads.

The 3rd stage was fast and a reverse of what teams know so well of previous years, I enjoyed this and it showed, we again were setting reasonable times and whilst not blistering we certainly were not slow. Additionally we were not taking risks and I was happy with the car.

Testing
The pre event test session we had done, prior the event on the Thursday, was worth it and I am sure this was showing in both my feeling behind the wheel and the speed of the car. We had fiddled with the suspension a bit, but spent most time swapping and comparing the 215 Vs 205 Falken D pattern "Soft" tyres.

The difference in the car was quite staggering and given the correct road conditions the larger 215 tyres were certainly working well. The rest of the test was spent chasing a weird miss fire that we could not track down and we suspected fuel surge or fouled spark plugs. The problem was the road we used was the same road about 10 other crews had used incl Neal and Possum in their WRC's, so there was no loose gravel and all bare exposed stone and rock. So we were getting incredible grip and by the end of the day we were leaving big black skid marks in the braking areas of the course!

SS4 and this was a new stage, and a whole brand new logging haul road. Designed for B double, (double length semi trailer) logging trucks this was simply a drag up the hill in mostly 4th and 5th gear, whilst the return loop was almost the opposite!

We were feeling good and the car was strong, 3 kms into the course and we had a noted "right 5 loop", meaning the road was a very long curve unfortunately in my error I had not called it to Andrew to note it as it also tightens and it did! Fully committed to the corner we entered it in 4th gear and it was also wet, by the time it started to tighten we had no where to go and as we ran wide the road got even slipperier, it was here we ran out of road!!!

I realised my error and turned to drive off the road, but the gutter was huge and the car dug in and stood on its nose and pirouetted anticlock wise at the front and caught on the right rear wheel as it began to come down. It just only rolled and I can distinctly remember thinking please no! We ended up on our roof, in the gutter.

30 minutes later we had the car back on its wheels, but of course our event (heat) was run and the car needed two new tyres (some were flat) and a heap of coolant, engine oil and gearbox oil. That had emptied itself whilst upside down onto the road!

We did that and drove it back to Salamanca Inn, and the guys are fixing it as I type so we can re start tomorrow's Heat 2.

Plans
We had already decided to skip the Melbourne ARC to test and be ready for our priority, the WRC event in New Zealand, this now means the car will look as good as it should go, when it has been given its new Group A engine (now ready at MRT) and had a small birthday at Premier Panel Beating!!

OVERALL POS	DRIVER CO-DRIVER	VEHICLE	CLASS	OVERALL TIME	DIFF.
1	Bourne Vincent	Subaru Impreza WRC2000	P5	1:01:36	0:00:00
2	Bates Taylor	Toyota Corolla WRC	P5	1:02:55	0:01:19
3	Crocker Foletta	Subaru Impreza WRX Sti	N4	1:04:02	0:02:26
4	Ordynski Stewart	Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 6	N4	1:04:59	0:03:23
5	Herridge Carlton	Subaru Impreza WRX RA	N4	1:05:26	0:03:50
6	Warren Judd	Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 4	P5	1:06:16	0:04:40
7	Evans Evans	Subaru Impreza WRX Sti	N4	1:06:31	0:04:55
8	Lowndes Randell	Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 5	N4	1:06:34	0:04:58
9	Shepheard Corkeron	Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 6	P5	1:07:15	0:05:39
10	Thompson Boddy	Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution 5	N4	1:07:35	0:05:59

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