Canberra rally driver, Rhys Pinter, has achieved a major coup for the upcoming Rally Australia, the fourth round of the Australian Rally Championship (ARC) and round 10 of the World Rally Championship (WRC).

Phil Hall co-driving in the UK. (Photo: Mark Slater)Rhys and his DAMESA Industries Rally Team have secured the services of international rally co-driver, Phil Hall, from the UK for the event.  This is a major positive for the ARC and a major boost for Rhys’ small family team.  

“For me this is a major positive, and I am so very excited to be getting assistance from Phil. Our team has very limited resources and to have an international co-driver link up with me is a massive boost,” Pinter said

Phil approached the team to help guide and mentor Rhys to get closer to the front-runners of the ARC.

“After the National Capital Rally the team identified areas for improvement and having Phil sit beside me at Rally Australia will realise some of those ambitions”.

Phil has experience co-driving in the US and Canada, as well as his national championship in Britain.  

“I’m very excited to be competing at Rally Australia with Rhys. The ARC is an awesome championship and one of my major aims this year was to compete in it and to do this particular rally is just the perfect realisation of that ambition,” Hall said.

“I know Rhys has great pace and is incredibly committed.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have spent a lot of time in R2 Fiestas and know the potential for good results. Rhys and I have been communicating for a while and I aim to work with him to find a few of those hard won tenths of a second by increasing his confidence in his notes, starting with recce and progressively on the event proper”.  

Both Rhys and Phil believe that although there is quite a distance between them distance wise, both of them will be well acclimatised with each other prior to the event.  

“It may seem like a quick ‘fly in/fly out’ ride, but really Phil and I have been getting to know each other for over six months now. I was going to have him in the car earlier this year, but unfortunately, like most things, both our budgets and prior commitments didn’t add up,” Pinter said.

“We continued to talk and an opportunity arose after the National Capital Rally and we both thought ‘why not’!  We see this partnership as only ‘part 1’ so to speak, which for me is very exciting, so watch this space’.

Even though the DAMESA team will compete at Rally Australia, it will still be on a shoestring.  Team Manager Oliver Jentsch explained: “Even though money will be very tight,  Rhys, myself and the team will do what we can with what we have.”  

Oliver also said that the team will doing some fundraising and hope to raise funds through the “ride with us’’ campaign, where for just $100, sponsors get their name or business on the Fiesta’s bonnet.

The DAMESA Industries team’s next event will be at the Narooma Forest Rally in August as a shakedown before Rally Australia.

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