After 125 kilometres of competitive stages on day one of Rally Spain today, Brendan Reeves and Rhianon Gelsomino have finished the day in third place in the Drive DMACK Fiesta Trophy.
Reeves started Friday’s stages with the same six tyres he used for Thursday night’s Super Special Stage in Barcelona, which meant that they were a little worn. After setting a blistering pace at SS1 in Barcelona, which saw him take the overnight lead, Reeves set out on Friday’s opener, SS2, continuing to learn more about the DMACK Ford Fiesta ST and he set the fourth fastest time, only ten seconds off the pace.
Continuing on SS3 and SS4, Reeves continued to come to grips with his new car but was also mindful of managing the tyres ahead of the mammoth 35.6 kilometre SS5, Terra Alta. Prior to the start of SS5, Reeves and Gelsomino fitted two new DMACK tyres to the front of their Fiesta to ensure they could attack over the long stage. A small spin on a tarmac corner cost Reeves a few seconds, but with no midday service allowed, just making it back to the end of the day was top priority!
“It was important to understand how the tyres wear and how the car set-up affects that,” Reeves said. “So the first four stages we really focused on that to help us for the afternoon loop of stages that were a repeat”.
At the halfway mark of day one Reeves received four new tyres at a tyre-fitting zone. This enabled crews to safely complete the afternoon loop of stages. After seeing how his tyres wore on the first loop of stages, Reeves knew how much harder he could push in the afternoon.
In the afternoon loop, stages SS6 - 8 proved more grippy then earlier and Reeves was able to maintain third place overall. However on SS8 Reeves’ tyres were a little more worn then expected and he had to back off slightly.
Again, as earlier in the day, Reeves fitted two new DMACK tyres and made a couple of adjustments as he prepared to tackle the repeat of the mammoth SS9 stage. He went into the stage knowing he was only 12 seconds behind fellow DDFT competitor Tom Cave and whilst he was down in the splits at the halfway mark, Reeves managed to pull away from the competition and set the fastest stage time to win the final stage of the day. He was able to reel Cave in so that only one second separates them heading into Saturday’s eight tarmac stages.
“I’m really happy with this afternoon’s pace,” Reeves commented. “We caught quite a lot of dust in the morning but with the two minute gaps this afternoon it was much better. We were able to go to a bit harder set up and this worked on the tarmac section. The car pulled through well today.”
Team mechanics have now swapped the Fiesta from a gravel set up to a full tarmac set up in time for day two of Rally Spain, the 12th round of the World Rally Championship, which consists of eight stages on tarmac.
Drive DMACK Fiesta Trophy Overall after SS9
Marius Aasen 1:38:17.1
Tom Cave +20.6
Brendan Reeves +1.0
Gus Greensmith +2:46.5
Kevin Van Deijne +7:25.4
Max Vatanen + 15:38.6
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