The 2010 AMSAG Pipe King Southern Cross Rally Series got under way on Saturday April 10 with the first round held in the State Forest at Jenolan 2 hours west of Sydney. With Forestry restricting access to some of the roads at the last minute the organisers had to choose between abandoning the event altogether or shortening it from a rally to a rally sprint format.
The latter prevailed with three competitive stages of approximately 7km each being set and run 3 times each by the field of 60 competitors.
The BEMW Rally Team set about defending their 2009 Open Championship title by setting equal 2nd fastest time on Stage 1 and backed it up with equal fastest on Stage 2, the nimble BMW E30 splitting the leading pack of turbocharged 4WD rally cars.
By the end of Stage 6 Mark and Matt were sitting in 3rd place outright, 23 seconds behind the Mitsubishi Evo 6 of Gerald Schofield in 2nd with Jamie Neale in his Mitsubishi Galant VR4 only one second behind in 4th. Leading the event was Michael and Chris Long in their Subaru Legacy RS.
On Stage 7 the pressure was on, Mark made a mistake coming into a right hand corner a bit too fast, running wide and losing valuable seconds struggling for traction in the loose dirt. He handed 3rd place to Jamie Neale with a 16 second buffer.
Mark and Matt responded on the next stage, beating Neale by three seconds and Schofield by five. They then set the fastest time done for the final stage, taking another seven seconds off Neale and 13 seconds off Schofield, but it was too little too late. The final result being 4th Outright and 1st 2WD just 6 seconds behind 3rd-placed Neale and 10 seconds behind second-placed Schofield. Congratulations to Michael and Chris Long who won the event by 55 seconds.
“While we have had higher placed finishes previously, this would have to be our best result to date given the fact that we were able to set such competitive stage times including 2 fastest stage times against the calibre of the opposition in this event!” exclaimed Mark.
The BEMW Rally Team is now preparing for the Cowra Shire Rally on May 15.
Watch a video of the 2010 Jenolan Rallysprint below.....
SUBSCRIBE BELOW TO READ THE FULL STORY
