Event Report

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Recce - Thursday

Rain, rain and more rain. It wasn't looking good. By the time we got to the start of Ben Cairn we were in thick fog. How could we write pacenotes if we couldn't see more than ten metres ahead?

We crept through the stage and made our best guess about distances and what the road was doing, expecting to be able to check it properly on our second pass. But unfortunately it stayed foggy all day - so we just had to hope the notes were roughly right.

A number of competitors got caught speeding and other offences with fines ranging up to $3,000. Perhaps it was a good thing we encountered fog, snow and rain!

I take my hat off (not for too long) to those officials who braved the snow to help us prepare. It was miserable out there.

Federation Square - Friday afternoon
Absolutely fantastic location and thousands of visitors. We had plenty of autograph seekers asking us to sign everything from posters to clothing - gave us quite a buzz. The NGK promo girls were a big hit, but despite our best efforts they declined our offer to be our service crew for the weekend!

Servicing
Henry Lemmon and Geoff Stewart once again did a brilliant job. We certainly couldn't have done it without them.

The service park in Yarra Glen was the showground - very soft underfoot, which made jacking the car a little difficult. I think the owners were lucky we didn't have any rain after Thursday, otherwise the service park would have been a quagmire.

Officials
Everyone was friendly and helpful and the entire event ran like clockwork. Thanks to all who made it happen!

The Rally
We were determined to go hard, not just take the soft option of picking up points for our Class. We kept an eye on a couple of WRX's and an Evo that we hoped to beat, and with some hard charging we managed to outgun them, even on some sheer horsepower type stages (ie uphill on bitumen). What was disappointing for us was that a number of the cars we were trying to match either crashed or had mechanical failures.

We finished Saturday 27th outright which we were delighted with. Our goal for Sunday was to peg back 1 min 12secs we were behind the Honda Civic of Denise Collins.

We were within ten seconds of Denise when the diff let go on Stage 14, only 20km or so from the finish. At least we had run every competitive stage except for the De Bortoli Super Special Stage. Despite the DNF we were pretty happy with how we went and the final result.

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