2003 State/Clubman Bega Valley Motors Rally - 9th June 2003

From a 2wd PERSPECTIVE

98 teams started the 2003 Rally of Bega on the town's Shire roads that are wide, smooth and VERY fast, yet they have a slippery fine layer of very abrasive gravel surface. This was our first time to run at Bega, which is now the biggest competitive dirt rally held anywhere in Australia.

SS1: I was seeded at car 45 in a field of 36 4WD turbo cars and 62 2WD cars. In the 1st stage the plan was to get to terms with the grip, and push as soon as I had a hold of the roads, this led us to be equal 1st with a local in the 2wd class with 4:39. With Competition from the best on the east coast like Gavin Mosher, David King and Kevin Gavin, we were on the pace. What did stick in my mind was passing the WRX STI of Willet sitting way off in a paddock that had rolled, just brings you back to earth that things can, and do go very wrong.

SS2: I was trying to be quick and not to much sideways, but owing to the grip it was very hard, and I found myself backing the car in to what might look good but not the quickest way around, we went wide in one hairpin and slid in to the bank which cost us a few seconds. The problem was that all the 4WD's took a different line which seemed to be turning from the middle of the road and I was trying to maximize the width of the road but ended up in the loose layer brushed out to the outside which resulted in some very sideways into the corners. We ended this stage 6 seconds off fastest 2WD with 5:57.

SS3: We were 3 seconds off fastest 2WD with 4:03, while King tied with Burke in the second Silvia. Still too much sideways.... BUT the crowd loved it ;) In this stage there was one very fast straight , where we were in 5th on the rpm limiter (7500) pulling over 200kph, that was over a bridge which has been the fastest I have been in this car on dirt!
We then headed back for service and after inspecting tyre wear I was sure we were going to run out of rear tyre's, I swapped them L>R>L as we still had four more shire roads before we headed to the bush. The tyre's were only 90% when we started as they were second hand, and after the first 3 stages they were lucky to be 40% left!

SS4: Mosher took this one that had many blind crests, where having done this event before would be helpful to set fast times, we were 16 seconds behind with 7min 39 sec on this longer stage.

SS5: This was a very short stage and more of the same good roads, King took this stage over us by 2seconds. We then headed to the Speedway for service and regroup, the front tyre's were new at the start of the event, we had only done 5 stages and they were now flogged, as were the rears. The new plan was to fit new fronts and near new rears before the bush stages, so we kept them on for the run around the speedway track and the last shire stage.

SS6: "Speedway" I would prefer to forget the first turn on this one, over commitment meant we added a 360 to one corner, the rest of the laps were faultless and on the money, we only lost 3 seconds to King, so all wasn't lost.

SS7: Was a started on Tar and then over a bridge up a dirt hill through the green grass fields, there were some tar corners in this one too and this was the last stage for these tyre's, so I threw it hard at the tar and was 2nd to Mosher by 3seconds with 2:19. The alternator light came on too, this wasn't a good sign.

SS8: We fitted new fronts and near new rears for the now rocky bush stages and also fitted the light pod, lucky that it was still light enough we didn't need them yet, but the plan was we would! We were on an old kind of surface that we were used to now and we tried as hard as I was game, but we were taken by King and Mosher who tied 3 seconds in front with 9 min 48 sec.

SS9:Was a 50 km stage, we started the stage and had the alternator light come on on SS7 and I was keeping an eye on the volts and temp gauge and only turning on the fans when it was getting high as the battery was getting low, but we pushed hard and had no moments, so all good, we set fastest 2WD with 19:36 and passed KING stuck in the stage and we knew now all we had to do was get it home and collect good points, not to say I wasn't pushing 100% either!

SS10: This was a stage I had been told about, it was Snake Gully stage that was the tightest stage I have seen, with wooden bridges that were very tiny and VERY slippery with a bank and the end of each. The only way to get over these quickly was to throw the car at them sideways, so that you come off the bridge pointing in the right direction. We had our share of problems on this stage as the speeds were very slow and for some reason the fans had blown the fuses, so the heat limiter kept causing the engine to miss fire, so as to cool it as a safety. This cost us a lot of time, BUT we still managed to set fastest 2WD time again with 18:26.

We then headed back to service and I had Sue (wife, service crew and manager) to the case to find an alternator, a big ask but the only way we were going to finish. We arrived to service in near dark with no lights and Sue had found a Reg so we fitted that, but didn't fix the problem, we went on another round and found some very helpful Guys, Thomas & Michael Barrett in the Datsun 180B from ACT who lent us there spare alternator, Thanks guys without your help I would not have made it! We fitted the alternator and by this time we were into our "late" time and 20 min's was used of the 30 we have before we were out. This didn't come cheap as you get 5 seconds for every minute penalty so we had 1min 35 sec added to our time. If this wasn't the worst of it, the rear tyre's was also stuffed and I was asked which of the four do we want to use, there was only 2-3mm left on the best 2 so we took them, which meant I was going to have to tread easy on the gas.

SS12: We then drove over 70km to the next stage, which near wore out my tyre's on that alone! This was the last stage, and it was as rough as they get, very large rocks and with no grip we pushed as hard as I was game, I was worried about getting a flat as well, which would really make my day NOT. Well we made it out, and back to park ferme, we had the rear tyre's down to canvas but we still got 3rd fastest 2WD .

The day ended with us as first 2wd NSW and 2nd 2WD outright with first going to the Vic team in there Mitsubishi Starion Turbo by only 9 seconds! and 20th outright amongst the 4WD turbo's from the 98 starters, in all 60 cars ended up finishing.

Thanks to Graham Roser and his team for a great rally, sorry to see you up on the hill Karl in SS1...not something you like to see happen to anyone.

Congratulations to Brett on a good rally and win, PS thanks also to Shane from MRT for all the dyno time and help :)