2002 - Round Four Review
Rally of the North - 17th August 2002

Thanks to our sponsors - Redhills Benz, Valvoline, STS Subaru Reckers.

Well what a weekend, a dark one for many.

Saturday dawned reasonably fine, with the chance of a few heavy showers during the day.

We started from downtown Paihia at 0843, and toured to the first stage. Along the way we noticed the "very heavy" presence of the Traffic Dep. of the Far North. There were at least 4 sitting on the verge with radar guns on the way too stage one alone, talk about overkill. We were warned at the start that any rally-car caught doing over 105km/hr on a touring stage would be ticketed, nice piece of revenue gathering from he far North Traffic Dept....well done.

Stage One went ok, we had gone for the 185 14" inch tyres, which weren't really suited to the conditions. They were quite slippery, so much so that at the second corner I thought we had a puncture in the left rear. It was a fun stage though, some real fast sections with 800m straights and the rather hair raising downhill section to the finish. The jump in the middle was double cautioned so we took that very easy.

It was at this point that we passed friend and fellow competitor Dylan Turner stopped on the side of the road, with driveline failure from a heavy landing at the jump.

On exiting the stage all was well, although the turbo had a slight whistle to it, which is never a good sound from a turbo. Service was a simple drink and snack, and we were on our way to stage two. 28km later, we arrived in the middle of no where, in the hills west of Paihia and queued up for the start of stage two.

It was at this point all the good fun turned to custard. I started the car to move into the control zone, and it made a rather weird sound, and stopped, with smoke coming from under the bonnet. That was it, end of day for us. All that was left to do was to wait for the service crew to pick up up and to tow us back to Paihia...another mechanical DNF!!!

Our class was won by Kevin Farmer (Mitsubishi Lancer GSR), second was Dave Burgess (Waiuku Car Spares Subaru Legacy) and third Ray Reid (Instant Lawn Subaru Legacy). Main casualty of the day were Alex & Gordon Gilmour with a huge off at the end of stage 3...and lots of work to do for Whakatane.

To see some of the action, visit www.onlinemotorsport.net. Other pics are here courtesy of Rodney James.

Provisional results are here

Next event is the Bay Rally on the 21st September.

Thx

Simon Bell
Redhills Rallyesport