Pre Rally Otago - March 2017

It’s a new year so that means it’s a new season for New Zealand Rally Championship. Everything kicks off this weekend, just outside of Dunedin with Drive South of Otago. There is a massive field of entrants this year with 130 team ready to make the start. There is a huge line up again of teams in the supporting Classic Rally every year the reputation of the event grows and grows, its quickly becoming an event to mark on the calendar for international competitors. With 60 crews registered for the New Zealand Championship, it looks to be an exciting season ahead! It’s an amazing show of support to all the organising teams who put our championship together.

Rally Otago is a fresh start for team and myself, unfortunately our 2016 campaign didn’t go in the direction that we had been aiming for. It was a difficult year developing a new car and getting the package right. It has been a very busy 5 months for me,  starting up my own business Hunt Diesel based out of Auckland. With this new venture its been incredible the support received and as a result I have had fully booked days and are looking to take on another technician to help ease the work load! 
This year Hunt Motorsport is working very closely with Speed Hub Motorsport to continue the development of our 2016 Subaru Nr4. Over the Summer some amazing progress has been made and what was a good car is now showing much improvement! Lots of small details requiring time and attention, have been ironed out and i’m feeling really comfortable in the car heading into this new season. With every km I drive i’m learning more and more about the Subaru’s characteristics and how to extract more speed from it.
 

The biggest obvious addition the car this year is a full sequential gearbox, this is an incredible change to the car, for a long time I’ve resisted the temptation to go down this route but after sampling what it can add to the car in terms of performance it really has been
a great investment. Gear changes are always perfect, flat gear shifting eliminates the need to even lift off the accelerator when changing up gears. We have a good development plan this year progressing forward and I’m excited to see the progress in the workshop and can not wait to test them before we debut them on the car at different events this year.
I have had a good number of test sessions in the car and the feeling is good. Having Tony along at the final test was valuable for the team as I was able to drive 100% to the notes in the forest and drive at full simulation rally pace it really helped nail down the final set up that I will start on for Otago rally.

The Otago rally see’s us head south this year towards Lawrence for the day one stages, we haven’t been down on these roads since 2013. They are pretty exciting, lots of crests and nice flowing roads that still require a lot of commitment to drive. We have a good base of notes to start with for these stages so it will be a case of building on what
I already have adding in additional information I will need. 
Day two we are back on the more traditional Dunedin stages in fact they are so iconic to the event now you couldn’t run it without them, the biggest re inclusion this year
is the Infamous Macintosh jump, it used to be pretty intimidating when dropping off it in a 2wd car this will be my first go in our Subaru I will be having a good long look at it to get everything perfect in my notes for it, no matter how good your brakes and transmission are it won’t help once your airborne!
All results from the weekend can be found on Chrissport and live tracking on rallysafe just download the app and follow our progress during the weekend. We also will be uploading videos and media throughout the weekend on the Ben Hunt Motorsport facebook page.
Also we still have a selection of team shirts available to purchase for $45 if anyone is interested please email or message us on our facebook page.