Rally Australia is the first event that Audacious Rallysport have ever entered as Australian Rally Championship (ARC) competitors. Rally of Queensland was an ARC event, but we competed in the Queensland Rally Championship (QRC) field. It’s true that the entry fees for ARC events are considerably higher, but the positive side of it is that your car is amongst the top cars in Australia – in terms of press coverage, running order, location that the car is parked during public events (such as the Rally Show in the centre of Coffs Harbour), and even the provision of service park facilities.

 

What is it like to run in Rally Australia?

The World Rally Championship field is present. This means all rules are strictly adhered to. There are tens are FIA employees (flown in from locations around the world) watching how the event is run, and making sure it is all done by the book. It also means that the ARC field has to abide by FIA restart rules, Recce rules, rally route and schedule.

 

The schedules is deliberately challenging so as to test the rally crews. Up early, doing a large number of competitive kilometres, alloowing only limited service time, with a lot of logistics to manage as well. All of this does test the crews, but Mark and I tried to manage all of this with the additional challenge of limited service crew assistance. We won't be trying this approach again...

 

It’s amazing to see how the WRC crews operate. The top manufacturers (VW, Citroen, Hyundai and Ford) have hundreds of staff all playing a small part in making their team operate. From their chefs to their media staff, their mechanics, suspension specialists and recce crews, it is a major contrast to our mini budget team. Just watching the WRC cars being serviced is an experience, and the public are allowed into the service park without restriction - which is great for the sport. Every tool, jack and zip tie has a special location, and every staff member operates according to a carefully devised plan. Some heavily damaged cars (which had been rolled or involved in significant altercations with trees) were straightened out and ready for use the next day – all during a 45 minute service.

 

It is very professional, and also a bit daunting, but great to compete in such a well organised event with such amazing and challenging roads. As the ARC drives on the identical route to the WRC cars, we could see the tracks they have left behind, and the cuts they are doing on the corners. We were literally driving in their wheel tracks most of the time, approximately 6 cars behind the end of the WRC field.

 

The size of the commitment

We departed Brisbane at 5.30am on Tuesday, presented for documentation at 10.30am, and commenced Recce a little after 11.30am. Our Trusty U-Haul trailer tows like a dream, and Vista 4wd Hire supplied us with the perfect combination of Tow vehicle and recce car in one of their optioned up Ford Ranger 3.2 litre 6 speed turbo diesel cab chassis utes.

 

Four days of annual leave just to compete in one event is a big commitment. ARC events don’t come larger than this, but if you don’t count the time required trailering your car to the event, they all require at least Thursday to Sunday for recce and competition.

 

Wednesday was a full day of recce 8 am to 5:30pm, so we had an issue getting our car scrutineered at 11am. We are very thankful to John Stilling for assisting us here. I know John from Rallying in Canberra 20 years ago when we used to both rally Mazda Rx2’s. John helped us out without a moment’s hesitation, and did fixes to the car as required to make sure it would pass. This is the spirit of Rallying, and we’ve seen it demonstrated repeatedly since being in the sport.

 

Thursday morning the ARC organisers provide VIP rides to supporters and press. It was our first chance to see how the car felt on the local roads, as testing in the ARC is a luxury only the top crews can afford to pay for.

 

It was great to take Craig from Fuji Xerox in Coffs harbour for a ride, he really enjoyed the experience, and I liked seeing his exuberance as he related to others how fun it was. I love the adrenalin you feel rallying, and it was refreshing to me to see someone else get a great high out of the experience.

 

We used the Thursday afternoon to check over the car at Greg Johanson’s newly created rally workshop in Woolgoolga. Greg is another guy I haven’t seen since the 1990’s, but he didn’t hesitate to help us when I was concerned about a suspension arm which could require strengthening. Greg has a burn for correctly engineering rally cars from the outset, and I think his rally preparation business will be a great success because of it.

 

Thursday night was the Rally show in the centre of Coffs Harbour. Our little Mitsubishi Mirage was parked just across the road from the top 10 WRC cars in the world. I tried to get some photos of its proximity to the WRC cars, but the road was so full of people, I could not get both cars in frame at one time. One of the highlights was seeing the WRC crews getting interviewed. This included Chris Atkinson (the most successful Australian WRC competitor of recent times), and Haydon Paddon who had brought an enormous contingent of supporters from New Zealand. There is no doubt that rallying has a very high profile in NZ, and Haydon Paddon is doing them proud with his performances. Atko (Chris Atkinson) was a little on the back foot having not driven much in recent times, but was clearly ecstatic to be competing for the Hyundai WRC team. Of course the best of the world were there and I was genuinely excited to be that close to legends like Ogier, Latvala, Mikkelsen, Otsberg, Neuville, Hirvonen, Elfyn Evans, Kris Meek and many others.

 

The rally

 

Friday

As if the lead up were not frenetic enough, from the start of the event on Friday morning, you are on a roller coaster which seems to pick up pace and in our case provide less and less sleep each day.

 

We started the event a bit shakily when we dropped off the pace notes early on in the first stage, and were unable to get back on them. We were somewhat slow, but got through. Thankfully it was only a 10klm stage, and Mark and I soon found a rhythm in the second stage. It’s hard to explain what an amazing job Mark did of navigating. The fact he was even willing to run an event of this size with his limited navigating experience was testimony to his guts under pressure, but when I watch other ARC crews in-car footage, I am convinced that his delivery of the notes is first class. Like everything in life, you get better the more you do it, and I think Mark’s confidence is much stronger after the two days we completed of Rally Australia. The timing of delivery is critical, and Mark has definitely mastered this.

 

The Friday stages had a lot of jumps in them. This was concerning as we didn’t want to destroy the car, but we also wanted to go hard. You can tell when you have taken a corner or a jump slower than was possible, which makes you feel like your loosing time, but we settled for some loss of time, to have the security of not overcooking it completely and ending the event pre-maturely. Because the rally stages are run a second time (repeated in the afternoon), you can creep up on them a bit, and I know I flew a lot higher on some of the humps the second time through. Not that you are driving for the spectators, but I do like to be close to the edge and I hope that translates into some good viewing when all is going well.

The schedule does allow some time for crews to eat. This is compulsory time in which the car cannot be touched. Both Friday and Saturday night, Fiona Manderson delivered Mark and I a delicious and healthy meal to keep us going. What a kind thing to do (thanks Fiona), and I have to say that her cookies and cakes are exceptionally delicious too.

 

The sting in the tail of Friday was a heavy shower of rain at about 7pm. We were caught running back to check out our car for the final super special stages, and our driving suits got pretty wet. While lining up for the stage, the windscreen was completely fogged up. The defrost fan was on full, but was not able to cope (no air conditioning in this car I’m afraid). I wiped the screen loads of times with a rag, but once my belts were on, I couldn’t reach more than a little circle on the screen. It was like rallying through a 10cm peep hole. I can’t imagine what it looked like from outside, but I do recall taking a ‘left two’ fully sideways while wiping the screen with my glove, and thinking that the spectators must be able to see that I can’t see out. As you would expect we were not the only ones suffering this fate, but it is hard to tell how much results were affected. I was totally relieved when we got to the end of the stage without doing any damage.

 

Because we were servicing for ourselves, we had to prepare the service area, fetch the car, rotate the wheels and change the front brake pads (which were on the metal), return the car (into the park ferme – restricted access area) before driving home and getting to bed just on midnight. The hot shower before bed was a great luxury, and we did what we could to get mud off our driving boots and suits ready for the next day. We literally didn’t have time to look at times or consider strategy. Poor Mark had to ‘mark-up’ the next day’s notes before bed too. I certainly wondered if we could keep this up for three days, but I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

 

Saturday

We were up about 6am to fill up our jerry can and give it to our main competitor’s service crew – who had offered to carry fuel to the remote service for us. I think they had watched us doing our own servicing and decided to take pity on us. There were only two 1600cc cars in rally Australia, so David Wilson and his daughter were our main competition. As it turns out our cars weigh very similar, and probably have very close to the same power output. It was a close match and our times were close, but we were managing to beat them by a little here and there, giving us the lead in 1600cc.

 

Saturday’s stages were south of Coffs in Nambucca and Valla. Nambucca is an amazing stage because it is 50klm long, and because it has some of the most open flowing roads and the most challenging goat tracks you can imagine. The last 15klm is on open flowing shire type roads, so any abuse you suffered on the goat tracks is all but forgotten by the end. We opted for soft tyres on the rear, and found that they overheated about 25 klm’s in to the stage. So much so, that I thought we had a flat tyre at one point. They just seemed to lose all sideways grip at the rear. Once out on the flowing roads where speed is higher and corners a lot less frequent, they seemed to cool down and operate well again. It was a good learning experience, and for my driving style, I think that the softer of the kumho tyres is only good for cooler conditions even on the rear of our mirage.

 

The Valla stage is beautiful. It’s like the flowing part of Nambucca, but only 8klm long. It’s a stage you just wish would never end. I’ve yet to meet a rally driver who doesn’t love open flowing sandy covered switch back corners like this. It reminds me of the pipeline stage in Canberra – similar surface and fun balancing the car on the throttle and brake, and using the back off oversteer to set up the car for the next corner.

 

Saturday lunch service we got our first assistance from Mark Williams and Clare May. Not sure if we could have held it together without these guys, who drove down from Brisbane and kindly assisted us even though they both have businesses which they are heavily invested in during the weekends.

 

After the repeat loop of stages we got a chance to run the super special stage again – this time without rain. The super special stage is a concocted stage specifically designed for spectators, and this one was particularly good. It is very tight to keep speeds down, but still offered a challenge to drivers, and no doubt got some great viewing in for spectators who got to see all of the cars twice. The WRC cars are very loud, quick and impressive. I was looking forward to putting in a better performance, but was somewhat shocked at the condition of the course. Putting this many cars through had dug some holes so deep that it had unearthed the plastic sewer pipes under the course. The roads were wet and slippery in parts too, but the biggest issue for me was that the rear suspension was doing something weird and unpredictable. It also made some very large banging noises.

 

Our exit from the event

Once we got through the super special stage, we went into service. It was clear we had lost the main bolts holding up our rear under body protection. This ‘tank guard’ is critical in the Mirage because it covers the fuel tank, and the tank is in a very vulnerable position without it. In all the effort to solve this problem, and to put some new rear brake pads into the car (they were also expired), we did not inspect the rear suspension correctly.

 

What had actually happened was that one of the main bolts had dropped out of a trailing arm. I thought the noises were due to our rear wheels driving over our own under body protection (tank guard), but they were caused by the bolt falling out and the arm becoming displaced. This was not obvious when looking at the car because the wheel was going back to the correct position when stopped. I think the lack of lighting was also a significant factor –since it was night when we were doing all of this.

 

Mark Williams, Clare May and Steve (from Neil Bates crew) all helped us fix the under body protection by the Sunday morning, but quite a way down the road in the first transport, the rear arm dislodged, and we could hear the wheel rubbing on the rear guard. Hope turned to despair as I realised that we could not fix it by the side of the road, or make it back to service in time to fix the car and continue.

 

A few people that we want to thank

• Vista 4WD hire – without them we would not have got to Coffs, or recce’d the stages. They have the excellent vehicles and genuinely great service.

• U-Haul – they have continually helped us with car transport, and we are great advocates of their quality trailers and easy hire processes.

• Mark Williams - Dirt Devil owner, who kindly assisted us at service on Saturday

• Clare May - Shoe Wonderland owner - Pretty handy with a spanner too

• Peter Flynn - Loaned us loads of gear which was critical

• Bernie Web who navigates for Mick Patton was really helpful to us. He qualified stage etiquette, and answered many questions throughout the event.

• Tom Ryan and Stephen Horobin stopped us making some silly mistakes, and kept us amuzed with their stories and antics.

Special thank you to the following teams who helped us:

• The rally school team

• The Repco team

• Neil Bates was good enough to provide Steve from his service crew to help us when we running out of time on the Sunday morning service - Thanks Steve

 

How well were we doing?

We had a good lead in the 1600cc class and were coming 5th outright in the ARC on Saturday night. We had been up as high as 4th outright when Adrian Coppin had some dramas, but he overtook us during Saturday.

 

I can see from the times that we are between 3.5 and 6 seconds off the top competitors pace. Our car has a lot of areas for improvement, but it’s hard to see the 1600cc engine being able to compete with the top cars.

 

With better suspension, and a close ratio gearbox, we will certainly improve the pace. Our main competition ended up 4th when another top car rolled on the final stage, so congratulations to David Wilson and Kaylie Newell in the Corolla Levin on a great result.

 

So Who Won it?

The overall rally was won by Scott Pedder. Mick and bernie were 2nd and Adrian Coppin 3rd. Our main competitor David Willams came in 4th outright and first 1600cc - which was an amazing result, and one we would have loved to have taken.