Round 4 - Rally of South Canterbury

A new event awaits us this weekend at the 4th round of 2018 New Zealand Rally Championship. Rally South Canterbury is the first time our team has travelled to Timaru for an event. It’s a complete unknown for us and we only have a few teaser images provided by the event organisers from sections of the stages to go on for what the event brings. It looks like we will be tackling fast flowing public roads with a good hard packed gravel bases. 

Being seeded 3rd for the event isn’t too bad of a position for road order, it gives us the best of both worlds if the gravel is thick a small swept line will be beginning to form in the road and if the weather completely packs it in gravel will still be present on the road surface which will keep us out of the slippery road base. 

The event layout is a very even amount of touring km vs racing km and is a 1 day sprint style event. Im using the word sprint very lightly 190km of competitive stages is far from a sprint. The day will require a very measured approach, I’ll come up with the best plan of attack after the Recce. The options I will be considering need to have a balanced proportion of attacking speed for the power stage and holding a good position in the rally to score a high points finish. 

Unfortunately after Rally Canterbury it has been a very busy turn around for the team. We tried very hard to re-join the event in Canterbury but were unfortunately unsuccessful in our attempts. The decision was made to send the car back home to my Auckland workshop. A huge thank you to the team for getting the car back so quickly. Apart from the hectic schedule to get the car transported up and down the island and fully prepared everything has gone well in the pre event build up. 

Our focus has now changed a little for the next two events of this season the way the championship runs this year you take your four best points scoring results from the first five events with you into the final round. Our early exit at Canterbury unfortunately has giving us a nil score, we now need to make sure we finish inside the top 5 of the overall rally as well as top 5 in the power stage to set ourselves up for the final event show down later in the year giving us a shot to be crowned NZRC Champions.