News - Harbour City Rally Round-Up

Team News from MRT

12th March 2002 - Harbour City Rally Round-Up

The Middleton Rally Team (MRT) have placed in equal 10th position overall in the King Street Wharf Harbour City Rally held in Sydney for the first time last weekend. This was to be the first outing of the Citibank Ready Credit Subaru Impreza STi in its higher Group A specifications. As the rally unfolded, MRT were very pleased with the result after the difficulties early on in the rally.

Heat 1 began well showing the crowd what sideways driving is all about in the Super Special Stage at King Street Wharf and setting equal 12th fastest time (even in the rain) on Friday night.

It wasn't until early on in the Heat 1 forest stages on Saturday at Wyong that (what was thought to be) the central viscous differential began to fail. "With the car switching from 4WD and 2WD intermittently, it was best to withdraw from Heat 1 to prevent further damage to the car." commented Brett. The MRT service crew swapping a whole new dog box and centre transfer case
with viscous to save time and had the Subaru Impreza STi ready for Heat 2.

With Brett having more time behind the wheel, and the Subaru Impreza STi running faultlessly all day, stage times were consistently being set in the top 8. "Watagan Road was dry and extremely quick. Our average speed for this stage was over 120km/h!", exclaimed Brett. With improving times over the day, MRT placed 8th outright in Heat 2.

The Falken tyres held up very well on the tarmac and the forest stages with many crews having flat tyres with other brands. The two official Falken team cars of MRT and GSA (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo) had none.

The team have chosen not to compete at the coming (ARC) Forest Rally in Perth, due to overseas business commitments and to concentrate on the International Rally of Canberra (3rd to the 5th of May), 2002.

For final results see: http://www.rally.com.au/arc2002/harbourcityrally/

Here is a QuickTime movie clip from SS11 you can download.

Harbour City Rally - SS11 (large, 1,600Kb.)
Harbour City Rally - SS11 (medium, 545Kb.)

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