Best season to date for ETCO Rally Team

The ETCO Rally Team pair of Glenn Inkster and Glenn Goldring have continued to go from strength to strength over a standout 2008 rally season.

The team’s first event in the ‘ETCO Evo 6.5’ for the year was the Wairarapa event, the opening round of the 2008 Rally Xtreme Series which the team aimed to conquer. A convincing second place saw the season get off to a good start behind season long rival, Glenn Smith.

In between the first and second Xtreme rounds, the ETCO Rally Team tackled the Taranaki Tarmac Rally for which they were defending champions. The weekend could not have been more perfect with the team sponsors making the trip down to spectate and support them. Inkster and Goldring failed to disappoint, taking a dominant back to back win.

Waitomo saw the second qualifying round for the Xtreme Series and the team had another fantastic result, finishing as top Xtreme qualifier and third outright behind two New Zealand Rally Champions in Chris West and Hayden Paddon.

The resurgence of the Ashley Forest Rallysprint was another fantastic opportunity to promote the team’s valuable sponsors. The result was an incredible second outright in their rally class car, up against the far more powerful unlimited class cars.

Naturally, the team had high expectations going into round one of the Xtreme finals series in Nelson. Unfortunately this event was the only one to provide disappointment when a clutch failure cost the team any chance of winning the two round Xtreme finals series.

The final event of the season for the ETCO Rally Team was the infamous Daybreaker Rally, where power steering failure and a consequent spin, more than accounted for the 20 second difference that left the ETCO pair second to season long rival, Glenn Smith.

For the last six years the team has enjoyed a special relationship that has been different to the average sponsor/team relationship. Principal sponsor ETCO have felt the many highs and rare lows with the team, however unfortunately ETCO have had to withdraw their fabulous support for the 2009 season. 

A big thanks must go out to all the teams fantastic sponsors. As well as ETCO, the team has been supported by TransNet, Repco, Signcity, HPM and De Walt.

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