The team went into the rally with a two point lead over recent ARC round winner Steve Glenney, and 14.5 points clear of ARC regular Jack Monkhouse.
“Due to Steve Glenney recently selling his car and Roman Watkins being unable to compete, the biggest competition was coming from Jack (Monkhouse) and Sam (Brand),” reported Dwyer.
“We had decided early that we needed to drive a smart rally and focus on the championship, and to do that we only needed to finish immediately behind Jack.”
The rally started on Saturday afternoon with the running of the piggy back event “the Southern Hills Tarmac Sprint”, a four stage sprint up Willunga Hill and Wickham hill (both used in the Classic Adelaide Rally), before changing over to the gravel format for the SA Rally Championship.
“The Tarmac Sprint was a big surprise for us,” commented Team Manager Amanda Dwyer. “The boys managed to win outright by 2 seconds against some very competitive tarmac specialists! Then all we had to do was bolt the Silverstone gravel tyres back on and we were ready for the rest of the rally!”
The rally resumed early on Sunday morning with 23 stages in total keeping all crews very busy. It was during one of the first stages that Sam Brand had steering failure (leading to an off road excursion) that the pressure came off Dwyer.
“It was from here on in that we decided that we would take it very easy and keep an eye on the times of the crews behind us rather than try and mix it with Jack,” said co-driver Craig Adams. “This wound up working a treat, as the attrition rate was enormous and the car needed looking after!”
At the end of the rally Monkhouse lead Dwyer by more than 3 minutes, but more importantly, Dwyer was more than 4 minutes in front of eventual third place getter Mitchell Hall.
“We are absolutely ecstatic,” Dwyer continued, “to win once was great, but twice in a row shows us that the first one wasn’t a fluke! I just want to thank so many people for their help and support, without them we just simply wouldn’t be here.”
DNA Rallysport is sponsored by Robot Technologies Australia and Detex Security, and supported by Povey Motors, Silverstone Tyres, Blackwood Tyrepower, Autosport, Flying Finish Motorsport and Fire Equipment and training.
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