MANNING VALLEY RALLY 2005 - TAREE

This was the first time in many moons that Taree has held their rally with “State status”. They are known for the best roads around with wide, open and fast flowing stages.

Starting as car 9 we were hoping for some good times being back a little more than the last few rallies we had done. 1st stage we come out on the pipe, setting 3rd fastest time in front of 20+ Turbo AWD cars. SS2 was 25km long, most of it being up hill! Wide and flowing, but many times you find out that blind corners tighten on the exit up the hill, which in a 2wd wipes off all the momentum you carry, so it was hard to mix it with the 4wd turbo cars.

SS3 starts out tight and very undulating hard to read, tightening corners that are very blind, required some finesse to be quick before opening out onto a fast open flowing road, we managed to mix it with most of the 4wd cars, but the locals paved the way for some quick times.

SS4 was down into the gully of the foot hills around, times were reasonable, less than 1.5sec/k behind the leading EVO7, still going well and consistently as quick as I dare.

SS5 was a reverse run of SS1, the first of the night stages too, we set out on a clean swept road, although greasy as moisture had come to the surface, setting equal 4th fastest time proved to be helpful later in our outright position!

SS6 was a repeat of SS2, only in the dark, with less than 15 seconds to the next 2 guys in front we were on a mission, although this stage was one that was going to lose us time by the fact of the nature of the land and this long large hill we climbed that seemed to go up for ever! As it turns out we took enough time off the next crew in front of us O/R to move up one more position as well, we moved up into 3rd outright with the demise of 2 other 4WD competitors, one sliding of the road, and the other with mechanical issues.

SS7 was also a repeat of SS4, we pushed on and tried hard to keep it tidy with a respectable time keeping us in 3rd OR.

SS8 was maybe the best stage of the day, a down hill run on a 2 lane road that was sensational.

We ended up 3rd outright and 1st 2wd (7 min's to the next 2wd) on a rally that had great roads, safe road book, but very challenging.

The car ran faultless all day. The service crew, Tony Sullen's, Anthony Barkley and Sue (wife;) were on the ball, everyone worked like clock work! Julia was exceptional, many times you think you have gone in way to hot braking at the very last second, anyone else might have faulted on getting out the calls on time, but she kept them coming all day, although admitting I gave her a few scares, and mumbling something about “lunatic” at the end of one stage J

The rally proved to be good and we ended up with good points away, myself scoring 2nd O/R points and Julia points for 1st as some of the locals are not competing in the full championship and as such were not registered. After dropping my worst round I stand at 4th O/R and1st in class, and Julia now is 2nd O/R with 1st in class as well.

The next event is Batemans Bay.