Herridges complete Safari with mixed fortunes

Driving their respective Subarus, the WA team tackled over 1,000 competitive kilometres of competition on the four days of action.

Of the pairing, Rob was the leading man home in the team’s Forester XT in fifth.

He and Chris Randell had a trouble-free event and were complimentary of the car’s ability in the tough conditions.

“The Subaru Forester XT performed faultlessly across the tough roads and trails. We didn’t have the outright speed of the purpose-built Dakar type machines, but the Forester certainly proved its an Outback Australia car,” Rob said.

For son Dean, seventh place was all he could manage, although his pace was much faster than his final result.

Midway through the second day, he and Sam Hill were running in second overall, but broke a lower control arm on their Crosstrek put them down the field.

The pairing won a stage and had several other top times to get themselves back up to their final finishing position at the end of Saturday.

“We enjoyed the challenge of this epic event and demonstrating how competitive the Subaru can be against the purpose-built off-road vehicles. There was some seriously challenging terrain, so to come away with a stage win and show our competitiveness was a great reward,” Dean said.

Maximum Motorsport prepares various Subarus for competitors in the Western Australian Rally Championship and are also developing and building the Subaru WRXs for the proposed 2024 Subaru WRX Challenge in the Australian Rally Championship.