Hi,

A bit of insight from a competitor's point of view at Rally Australia: we entered the WRC section in a Group N Ford Fiesta ST and ran at the back of the WRC field. There were only three 2WD cars in WRC, Harry Hunt in his DS3 R3, us and another Fiesta driven by Adrian Coppin.

Unfortunately recce did not go smoothly: another competitor forgot that in Australia we drive on the left side of the road and we were lucky to avoid a head on crash at highway speeds! The recce car was written off, but at least nobody got injured and we were able to continue, even if that was without side windows and with some airbags hanging from the roof.

Apart from that we had a very good event, only had some troubles with the rear wheel bearings on Saturday morning but that got fixed at service. Friday was incredibly slippery, the roads have a clay base and the tyres just slide on it without getting any grip. With so many WRC cars off the road we were 16th at the end of day 1.

The roads on day 2 were completely different, very fast and real pleasure to drive. Welshes is probably one of the best stages in the ARC at the moment, with Grace a close second! We had to keep in mind that this was also part of the Australian Rally Championship, so we did not take any crazy risks and bagged good points for the 2WD class (which we are currently leading).

Day 3 was back on narrow forest roads which got quite rough on the second pass, but the weather was nice and we had a lot of fun driving without any championship pressure. The first stage, Bucca, was really nice but the power stage was not bad too given that it did not make a good impression when we did recce. In the end we won Group 8, finished 22nd in WRC, 2nd 2WD in both WRC and ARC.

This was a very different Rally Australia compared to 2009, there were a lot of spectators and all of them were very friendly with no rock-throwing locals in sight. There were issues with they way the Coffs SSS was organised, something to be expected for a brand new event.

We will be back in 2013, hopefully joined by more Australian crews!

Raz

MAXYrally