Team News from MRT

"MRT wins at Bega State Rally Championship event, 8th June 2003"

After much effort as team owner / driver I am pleased to have our team achieve success in what I call one of my favourite events.

The Bega State Championship event held every year typically on the Queens Birthday long weekend, is unique. The first half of the rally is on shire roads, rarely closed and incredibly smooth.

http://bega.yourguide.com.au/detail.asp?class=sport&subclass=local&category=general%20sport&story_id=233318&y=2003&m=6

Crews running the event for the first time are in awe at the quality, then they realise they come at a price! Tyre wear is huge and the further back in the field of cars the more grip there is, with even more wear!

With continued support from Falken Tyres we were well prepared for the right tyre in the conditions and this proved a valuable asset. http://www.mrtrally.com.au/team/falken.htm

Photos courtesy of Darren Keeler

This is an event I have tried to simply complete for what must be over 20 years.
Rolled cars, broken crankshafts, broken axles, busted clutch's, twisted drive shafts, you name it chances are we have done it at Bega!

This years event was (as always) aimed to be different, the car was had plenty of time to be prepared, (the prior event was 4 months earlier) and the team were all motivated!

Over 100 cars were entered and many crews came up from Victoria to compete in the NSW / Victoria interstate challenge. We were seeded at car 12 (I don't know why so far back) and we were happy with this, the roads would be 'swept' and we had most of the crews in front of us that we wanted to 'watch'

The first group of five Shire roads were typical Bega, the weather was good and we were doing better than I expected, and we were still competing! By the time we headed into the forest stages we had approximately a 1 minute lead from 2nd place. It was here I expected to lose the advantage of what we had on the shire roads, so I concentrated even more and did my best to focus on the finish and a reasonable result.

The roads were gaining their share of horror, one in particular of Mark Hughes ended in his WRX being turned to scrap, a pity the car was a well known Impreza of Michael Thompson. Thankfully the crew are ok.
http://www.bmsc.com.au/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=892&password=&sort=1&cat=3020&page=1

The MRT service crew were changing the car set up as I needed it, the DMS suspension was working well with the new spring rates and other recent changes to the car by Shane and Paul at the workshop seemed also to be paying off.

Paul had recently spent some time on our new Dyna Pack Chassis Dyno, http://www.mrtrally.com.au/performance/DynaPack.htm and the changes were obvious to me and a few astute spectators!

The first of the long stages was 30 kms and this was our nemesis, in the past we never made it through, so I was a little worried when we hit a huge rock and got a slow puncture 1km from the finish. The Falken Tyres proved their value and held on the rim to the end and we only lost a small amount of time, and managed to still set a reasonable result. Other crews, such as Miles Sandy and Colin Trinder were less fortunate, they had their Silverstone's go flat 5km into the stage and had to stop and change the tyre, losing over 3 minutes.

Hard charger Howard Grove and David Lowe in their fast Lancer had turbo pipe problems earlier in the event, only to fix that and then suffer ignition problems.

Up the front of the field most crews were battling to be fastest and were blissfully unaware that we had by now established a lead of almost 2 minutes from Victorian driver Mike Reeves in his rapid Lancer.

A continued mixture of long and short forestry stages made up the rest of the event including the "Snake Track" undoubtedly one of the twistiest and nastiest rally roads I have ever ran. I lost count of the wooden bridges and the 1st gear corners! This stage we won, but by only 2 minutes from Mike Reeves

There were a few more stages and we continued to build on our lead to excess of 2minutes and the final 25 km stage ran at night was one we need not win, but our focus was to finish. It was the roughest of the rally and with many rocks on the road to catch out crews. A flat tyre was our major concern, not because our Falken tyres were a problem, but because many rocks were exposed from recent heavy rain and easy to do damage on. We set a reasonable pace and were pleased to add another stage top our list of fastest times.

The short trip back to Bega seemed a long one and Andrew and myself were pleased to share our success with the team and our wives and children, some of which was their first event.

We will remember this Bega like they probably will into the future.

The next event for MRT is the Premier State Rally of NSW, http://www.rally.com.au/arc2003/premierstate our "local" event and this will be followed by unknown events as we are now re evaluating our decisions of what rallies to compete!, the ARC or the NSW State Championship.

Thanks to our group of partners http://www.mrtrallycom.au/team/sponsors.htm

Relevant links
Full results http://www.bmsc.com.au/sdownload/download.php?id=130
Story http://www.bmsc.com.au/showarticle.php?s=59aab423e95ece9dd5fecc8f549a8837&threadid=2115
ARN story http://www.rallysportnews.com.au/cms/A_30358/article.html
More rally photos http://www.mfoto.com.au/mfoto2001/hires/hr03_1024x768.jpg

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