Eli says more speed to come in Citroen

Fresh off victory at last weekend’s Quit Forest Rally, new Team Citroen Australia recruit Eli Evans says he’s gaining more confidence in his DS3 and that in turn will lead to even more pace over the coming rounds.

Despite a difficult preparation to the season, when a planned test day earlier in the year was almost entirely washed out, Evans arrived in Western Australia with precious little experience with the Citroen DS3, but quickly set about making up for lost time.

“It’s completely different from any of the previous cars I’ve driven, and I expected it to be so. It’s turbo-charged, it’s got paddle shift, those two things alone are completely different from the Hondas I’ve driven,” said Evans after the pre-event test day.

Team Principal Ron Cremen added: “We almost needed to get a big shoe horn to prise Eli out of the car. He just wanted to keep going and that was great to see. We knew how determined Eli was when he agreed to join us, but to see his determination to learn the car was very impressive.”

Even though he failed to qualify for the ARMOR ALL & STP Power Stage on the Friday morning, and trailed his older brother Simon after the opening two tarmac stages on Friday night, Evans was quietly confident that he had the pace when the cars hit the gravel.

By just his sixth stage in the car, he and co-driver Glen Weston were topping the time sheets, and going on to claim another eight fastest times over the remainder of the weekend.

“I’m feeling pretty comfortable in the car,” Evans said at the conclusion of the rally, having secured Citroen’s first Australian Rally Championship victory.

“Citroen have built a great car, and the result we achieved is about doing the car justice I believe. It’s been such a hard rally, I drove as fast as I could, and the competition was fierce from the very start.”

“The pace from Simon, from Molly (Taylor), from everyone, was incredible. Getting the win, it’s a massive relief, and I’m very proud of what we’ve achieved.”

With quite differing characteristics to the front-wheel rally cars he’s driven in the past did Evans have to change his style?

“I haven’t had to adjust the way I drive to suit the car. If anything we’ve had to adjust the car to suit me. We slowly achieved that over the weekend as we got more kilometres in the car, and as we made changes I was able to increase my confidence and speed too,” he explained.

“It handles so well though, and it likes to be driven fast, so I can relate to it.”

“There’s more speed in the car, and that’s reassuring because the other guys are only going to get faster too! It’s Molly’s first rally in the Renault, and it was Simon’s first ARC in the Civic, so of course those two will get more comfortable in their cars and go faster.”

With just five rounds in this year’s ECB ARC, every result will be crucial and Evans and Citroen left WA with a solid haul of points to set up their title race.

“We showed that the car can win so there is no reason why we can’t win the next four rounds, too!”

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