Round 5 - Rally of Coromandel

The penultimate round in the New Zealand Rally Championship this year is Rally Coromandel. This years event is a single day of rallying on Saturday 18th August. It has been close to 3 months off in-between rounds of the championship and I’m really looking forward to being back in the car. 

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Ive been keeping busy and match fit for my racing during the break. After South Canterbury rally we decided to keep and prepare the car in the south island for the Nelson Rally.  It was awesome to have the Nelson team back on board to prepare the car. I had such a great time at the event last year I had to compete again and try to win it back to back. Nelson turned out to be a traditional fine sunny day for all teams competing. A new set of stages held on public roads this year kept the rally fresh and enjoyable. 

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Real highlight stages for me were getting to race over the Dovedale hill in a 4wd for the first time and Dry Weather road, I can only hope one day ill get to compete on notes on Dry weather road it was an awesome stage with lots of rhythm changes and with notes it would be an amazing stage, everyone I spoke to at prize giving had nothing but praise for the wonderful event the Nelson Car club put on in 2018. 

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The car ran flawlessly the whole day winning all of the stages, we finished with a lead of around a minute and a half over Josh Marsden. Dunlop offered me a great opportunity at the event to test out their newest pattern rally tyre, the grip and braking traction offered by the new tyre is incredible, the work and development behind this leading brand of rally tyre is phenomenal. Huge thanks to Richard for letting me take the new product for a spin.

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After the rally the car returned back to Auckland for a quick tidy up in the cosmetic department before going on display at the Hella NZ stand at the CRC Speed Show, the weekend attracted thousands of visitors to the show. We had prizes and giveaways of Hunt Motorsport team gear running over the duration of the weekend. It was great to meet fans of the Team and the Subaru brand checking out the latest lighting solutions offered by Hella. The following weekend we went to Hamilton for the opening of the new Hydraulink store in Hamilton and had the car on display for customers to enjoy.

Rally Coromandel is only 3 repeated stages again this year, its good having a great set of notes to use at the event but its also a bit gutting with roads being unavailable to be used in the region. We have a two pass recce, giving us a good opportunity to really fine tune all the details we need. Im expecting the event to be a real close affair for all the competitors with not a lot of time differences between the crews challenging for the event win. Im looking for a good points haul over the weekend targeting the power stage bonus points as well as a good overall result. This is the last points scoring opportunity to get our best tally of results before Rally New Zealand.

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Ben Hunt