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Team News from MRT

20th July 2002 - Rally of SA - Roundup

"Falken tyres prove the difference!"

THE TRIP TO ADELAIDE
Just getting to Adelaide is a 15 hr trip from Sydney, MRT head mechanic, Shane, drove it alone! A late change by one team member meant he had no one to share the drive, and he did it mostly at night! All this after several (very) late nights when the rebuild on our rally car and engine ran late! He then went and did it again to come home. Well done Shane.

LEAD UP
The lead up to the event had us all encouraged to expect fine weather, unlike last years terrible rain we all looked forward to a dry event. How wrong we were! Pre event recognisance was relatively dry with some small rain showers, however more came Friday thankfully Friday nite was reasonably ok for the Super special Stage around the Wayville Showground, in the centre of Adelaide, thousands of spectators turned up. But alas the weather basically got worse and worse. The roads in some cases coped well, especially the shire roads, but unfortunately the Forest roads (even with the work done over the last 12 months) suffered badly. PR for the event was good, with lots of TV commercials promoting the stages and many locals well aware of the event.

FRIDAY NITE - HEAT 1
Prior to the rally start crews and cars were on display at the entrance to the showgrounds, as the thousands of spectators arrived many teams were signing posters (inside the entrance) as fast as they can to give them away to the enthusiastic crowd as well as answering many questions about the cars.

The Friday nite stage was a revised version of last year, the start was outside the main arenea on bitumen, (the main track is man made gravel in the centre and utilises the fine gravel trotting track at the sides) with a 90 right that took us into the arena across the trotting track and across the infield over a massive blind jump that unless taken at 90 km/h or more the car would be damaged on the landing, a sweeping left turn took cars onto the main track (an oval) and into another long sweeping turn, crews then hit another (smaller) jump where they would cross over the place where we entered from.
By this time speeds were pretty fast and the jump could be taken flat out.

Again another sweeping turn and around to repeat the outer loop and over the small jump again prior to the finish line. Cars started in reverse order and times steadily got faster and faster, we did a 0.53 (=10th) and fastest was Simon and Sue Evans in their Impreza, with a 0.50 their special electronic centre differential obviously suiting the stage.

Cars were locked away for the evening in "Park Ferme" and we all were up early (around 7am) to start the rally proper. A mixture of shire roads and Forest trails.

SATURDAY - HEAT 1 cont.
Special Stage 2, Redex road, was a repeat of last year, relatively fast (Shire road) at the start with a (wet) creek crossing, this stage wakes us all up, and then gets steadily tighter, we were reasonably happy with this stage. MRT were =15th. Kersbrook was next, a terrible Forest stage that was radically changed from last year, we were still a little of the pace at 17th, whilst up front Ed Ordynski was leading.

Special Stage 4, Hannaford hump, well known for a sharp jump in the middle of the stage, equally well known for camera crews as well! MRT were still on 215 falken Tyres and we were wondering where we were going wrong. A leap off the jump also confirmed we were trying reasonably hard, this stage we were 12th fastest and now 13th overall.

Tony Sullens had a bad accident when they mis queued the jump and instead of backing off in fourth they hit it flat in fifth, almost putting the car into orbit! Unfortunately the landing is awkward and the car was damaged badly. Both crew escaped unhurt. (For a pic of this go to the web
http://www.rally.com.au/arc2002/rallysa/index.cfm?fuseaction=photos.site_photos&startrow=17&cfid=2056717&cftoken=93664669)

Ridgetops was the next a Forest stage that wound its way down to the major spectator point, known for a very fast water crossing, like last year we took it flat in 5th gear, the car hardly touching the water as it skimmed across the top.

Special Stage 6 was next another Forest stage, called Forties and this one also winds its way thru to the spectator point, it includes a very fast entry to a wet corner onto another equally fast road that closes into the Forest proper and has a nasty left hand turn on a narrow track that often catches crews out. Personally I like this stage and it showed, we were =6th overall. Up front Possum was16 seconds faster and catching Ed Ordynski.

Latvian Spy was a difficult stage, tight and narrow, a small error would be disaster on this and we were 11th.

Special Stage 8 High Eden. This stage is for the brave, with super fast sweeping corners, I have to admit I dont need to be a hero here! The times show the crews with commitment! Even though our car is powerful, speeds well over 180 km/h (115Mph) requires smooth lines and a never back off approach, with concentration to the pace notes!

Unfortunately we struck our only drama of the event, on a sweeping 4th gear corner a rock was in the middle of the road, unable to change direction we drove over it, hoping to not do damage. The size of a football, it ripped out the whole centre exhaust! We continued and were still 12th fastest.

We drove 40km to service and had several offers of exhausts to repair ours, however we lost time as one crew offered their spare, this was then refused by the father (owner) of the team, even though we had helped them seval times in past events and the driver still wanting to assist us!! We were thankful that Tony Sullens (who had just retired) loaned us his complete exhaust, The delay caused us to lose 50 seconds in penalty time as we were late to book out of service. We also had several offers of road cars exhausts, thanks people!

At the service we also decided to try some new Falken 205 mud tyres. Typically we use a 215 d pattern tyre that is suited to hard packed roads, with the even increasing rain and deterioration of the Forestry Stages we decided to give them a whirl. Having never tested on them, (we never had time nor opportunity to do this on serious wet roads) we were a little nervous! Well what a difference, my description to Andrew was, "its like competing on worn cross plies then changing to slicks on dry bitumen"

The new pattern tyres showed, on SS 9 Ridgetops 2, we were =9th, and Forties 2 we were incredibly 4th outright! Mud tyres were not as well suited to the two new stages Mawsons Row and Retreat valley, both twisty shire stages that finished on faster sweeping roads, we were 10th on both.

However luck would have it we were still on mud tyres for the transport back to the super special showground and with no allowance to change we sat and waited in the rain. The heavens opened up and the track turned to porridge, run in reverse order we all watched crews battle the track, from a reasonably grippy centre jump, to a nightmare ice rink like surface on the main course! All crews were nervous, we still had mud tyres, so I was a little less nervous. The night before fastest time was 50 seconds, crews immediately before us were all doing 80 and 90's.

I decided to be careful and see what happened on the first (nasty) corner and then go from there, luckily we run DMS suspension and the car turned in, (our fear was the concrete wall!) so I nailed the throttle and did a full noise power slide all the way around and onto the second jump, the next sweeping corner was the same so I did the same also, the end result was a lot of (happy) spectators covered in mud and a time of 66 seconds, at least 10 seconds faster than any one, yet!

The track got drier and steadily improved so we expected our time to be bettered, eventually we were =2nd fastest with Cody and Ed, Possum the last to run was fastest. We had fun! The team worked for 2 hrs at the optional service cleaning the car and repairing any damage I had done on the day, we parked the car and got to bed at 1 am

Results heat 1
Ed, Possum, Simon, Cody, Spencer Lowndes, Dean Herridge, Chris Atkinson (the new young gun!), Scott Pedder, John Goasdoue, Mark Pedder, Michael Boaden, then MRT 12th

SUNDAY - HEAT 2
A very early start, up at 6 am, and the rain had eased off overnight but not as much as we hoped. The success of the Falken mud tyres convinced us to run them all day Sunday, as a result this would suit some stages and not others. Many stages were a repeat of Heat One and all they would all be worse. SS14 Mawsons Row 2 was the same and we were 9th, Retreat valley we were 11th and the Forest Stage, Forties we were 10th.

SS17 Hannaford hump 2 we were a little too careful and the tyres were not suited, our time was slow, 12th . We were still 10th outright and up front Possum was leading Ed followed by Cody and Simon. Ridgetops (SS19) and we were 10th, a little slow on my favourite stage, and the super fast High Eden =11th. We were 10th outright

The second last stage Forties, 8 km long and we were pushing hard, a little too hard, we entered a corner with a rut that was steadily getting worse with every run, although this time we popped the tyre off the rim and got a flat tyre, with 3km to go we pushed on, driving at 170 km/h is scary with a flat front tyre! This dropped us back one spot to 10th, 2 seconds behind John Goasduae in his Mitsubishi EVO 3.

Special Stage 22 Ridgetops for the 4th and last time! We had half a chance to gain back 9th, but John was not giving up without a fight! The both of us pushed hard through this forest stage, the final of the event, incredibly over 6km we set equal times and were both equal 6th fastest!

Final results heat two
Possum, Ed, Cody, Spencer , Dean , Scott , Simon , Chris , John , and then us 10th

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