News - 6th February

Team News from MRT

6th February - MRT ready for revised Australian Rally Championship.

With the first event in the Australian Rally Series less than 6 weeks away (to be held in Sydney) the MRT crew are completing the finishing touches to their CitiBank Ready Credit Group A Impreza Sti.

The New Zealand International event last year gave us a good head start for this season and with a small club event we ran just prior to Christmas, this gave us an opportunity to iron out some bugs in our new Group A engine. We have made a lot of effort to be sure we leave nothing to chance because this is the year we have to take advantage of the experience we have built up and my learning curve in driving the car has now matured a lot, since my introduction 2 years ago.

Disc Brakes Australia have been working on a new radical update to the Subaru Brake Rotor and with this technical involvement the partnership with MRT Performance is set to gain strength by improving the brakes on the rally car as well.

The Australian rally series has some radical changes this year, gone is the fire breathing World rally Cars of Neal Bates (Corolla) and Possum Bourne (Impreza). Whilst Bates is yet to secure a solid deal, Bourne is moving into a all new personally prepared Impreza Sti 2002 Group N model backed up by team mate Cody Crocker in his similar "regular" but new model Impreza Sti.

The competition will be strong in the privateers as well, with a new rule set to strangle existing Group A (PRC) cars should they achieve podium results. This will see a string of new Group N cars to compete what will effectively be a outright championship, for Group N cars only.

New rules will limit power of potentially successful cars like the Group A rally versions of MRT's, Miles Sandy and Michael Thompson (new 02 Group A car). Parity is required to be fair to the Group N cars, whilst this may seem unfair to these Group A teams, the ARC has set some high standards to be achieved and potentially leads the way in any national Championship, anywhere in the world. We plan to do the whole ARC as well as selected international Events, including Canberra, New Zealand and possibly one other.

The teams base, MRT Performance has also had some changes, staff now exceed 15.
The growth of the business has been an asset and a hindrance to the rally team. New building works are set to proceed shortly to allow more room for both divisions of the company.
"Our Overseas partners and agents have assisted MRT Performance to not only be number one in aftermarket Subaru Performance parts in Australia, but we are now are seen as a leader in the world for reliability and innovation.

MRT is once again backed up by its strong advertising partners, tyres will be again supplied by Falken, Insurance by Shannon's, Panel and Paint by Premier Panel Beating and lights by Cibie.
We tested the new Cibie Oscar HID lamps in Rally NZ last year and I am actually looking forward to doing the night super special stages in Darling Harbour, they are incredible, its hard to put into words actually how bright they are.

Citibank Ready Credit once again has naming rights on the team and Go Fast Bits, have stepped up support, a new company moving "fast" into the performance parts market, with alloy Pullies and Blow Off valves. Suspension is provided by Drummond Motor Sport, Karcher and Roman Autotek have also once again renewed their involvement.

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