Team News from MRT

Positive result for MRT in Premier State Rally

The weekends rally, was one of mixed success, for Andrew, the team and myself.
Friday night (SS1 and SS2) at the Eastern Creek International race track was a real buzz, thousands of spectators mixed in with friends and people who came up to say hello was great, however the cancellation of the dirt stage disappointed us and many others. The track was incredibly slippery and the decision to withdraw its use was the right one.

One good point was the repeating of the bitumen stage, meaning we could attack a little harder 2nd time out, this was good for us as the skid pan stage was devoid of its previous traffic cones and this allowed us a lot more freedom in sliding the car around! Here is some in car vision (4Mb) of that stage created specially for us form the in car camera's supplied by David Thomson of Artisan Consultants. For the outside video view follow this link, here (14Mb) and here (15Mb) (same as last newsletter)

Saturday
The hours drive up to the central coast was awkward in a rally car that was thankfully followed by an extended nights sleep, with several cancelled stages (SS3) that allowed us an extra hours sleep Saturday morning!

Basically the event was made up of a major loop of three stages that was competed over and returned to a major service point at Wyong.

SS 4 was "Prickly Ridge " (11.2km), the stage that I am sure almost %90 of the crews who did pace notes on the Thursday prior got either stuck in the mud or spent time pulling others out! As a result not only was the road still very slippery, but it was also showing early signs of wear, exposing huge rocks that would only get worse with every subsequent run.
I drove the stage carefully, opting for the "To finish first, first you have to finish" strategy, this proved a little wrong as I was too careful and we dropped and embarrassing amount of time to the cars we should have been equal with! 26th overall, was bad! Poor tyre (tread pattern) choice on Andrew and my behalf's only added to the problem, we should have been on mud tyres, (new generation 'C's) when we had incorrectly expected the stage to be drier and more hard packed and we were on "D's". To see some tyre types refer here.

SS5 'Bevans Ridge" 19.6km I was all revved up with the SS4 disaster, only to lose the clutch 500 m into the stage, a simple error of removing mud from the clutch pedal had dislodged the release bearing. This stage was fast at the start and reasonably well known to me as we used it a few years ago for private testing, however, on notes, I try not to remember corners as its a recipe for disaster should I remember wrong! The end of the stage weaves its way, back down the ridge and ends close to a farmers paddock, my fear with no clutch was going off the road and not being able to get back on again. 29th overall was more bad news!

SS6 'Middle Ridge" 11.75 km. As our day was now turning from bad to worse, our plan was to either retire or press on, luckily I was able to repair the clutch on the transport to this stage so we set of tentatively (not knowing if I fixed it properly!) as the last thing I needed again was no clutch! 22nd outright was a little better, but not what I would say good! Follow this link for a video file of the stages (4Mb)
We returned to the major service for some repairs and personal critique!

SS7, 8 and 9 were a repeat of above.

Prickly ridge was getting rougher in the areas that were originally slippery, but towards the end of the stage it improved, this time we were 19th and an incredible 35 seconds faster! The (correct) tyres were working and so was the driver!
Bevans was more fun and still incredibly fast, 13th was better and incredibly over 1 minute faster! Middle ridge told the same story, 11th and 13 seconds faster. This gave us an eventual 19th outright and 4th in Group A

Up front, the field was incredibly fast and proving why they are the factory drivers! Cody Crocker and Greg Foletta won the heat, by 4 seconds from Ed Ordynski / Iain Stewart, Scott Pedder and Paul Humm were only 0.8 of a second in 3rd! Simon and Sue Evans managed a 5th, a result not showing their hard charge, incredibly, Simon was much faster on several stages only to lose it with a electrical missfire.

Sunday
The stages were again similar to Saturday, except this time, Prickly ridge was shortened and Bevans was replaced, by the famous Watagan Road, in place of it, (followed by Middle Ridge)
Today was equally difficult as Saturday, the now badly worn roads were exposing huge boulders, ready to catch an unwary driver and smash a wheel or cause a flat tyre, the surface was drying out even more, and tyre choice was almost a lottery!
As driver I was faced with two evils, go slow and save the car and finish or press hard and do a good stage time and risk a DNF. Being mechanically sympathetic to my car I opted for half and half! The Falken tyres doing their job and saving us from tyre puncture, whilst the DMS suspension was working overtime on the ruts and rocks!
Watagan road is a favourite of mine so we aimed to have the correct tyres for this stage and have a "go", I drove hard and managed a 13.06 time over the 24km stage. Incredibly this was still 15th and Ed Ordynski was a full minute faster!! (Am I getting old?, i cant use that excuse as Ed is older!) It must be the budget!

The repeat run through the stages again, resulted in a more aggressive drive from myself, and enthusiasm to set a half decent stage time on Watagan road! This run through we managed 11th fastest and 12.53, (an average speed of 116km/h) but damn it, Ed Still whipped us at 12.09, (hmm must be budget and talent!)

We completed Middle Ridge and came away with 14th overall. not bad for such a poor start, Over all for the weekend Ed and Iain was 1st, Simon and Sue 2nd and (Finnish driver) Juha Kangas and Julia Rabbett 3rd

For more details results pics and Point scores go to the official rally site

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