Going into the last event the Mitchell/Cadman crew had a slender 11 point lead over the Roberts/Gleeson combination. Mitchell/Cadman only had to finish in the top five to clinch the Championship, but in typical fashion John was on the attack from Stage 1 opening a 2 second lead over Peter.
On each stage the lead fluctuated with Peter taking the next with John fighting back to once again take SS4 for a 2 second lead.
SS5 saw John go into full attack taking a the biggest lead so far with a 9 second lead over Peter. Not to be outdone Peter fought back with a 10 second gain on SS6. Jo was heard to say that John was taking it easy with the aim to win the Championship and any result in the top 5 was the aim.
Someone forgot to tell John as on SS7 he took the ten seconds back and eventually went onto win the event by 3 seconds and take out his second State Rally Championship title and the first with Jo.
Peter was the first to congratulate John and Jo on what was an exciting championship with both teams chasing the title down to the wire.
The up and coming team of Adam and Grant Kennedy showed great maturity throughout the year with very consistent results at each event until gearbox troubles stopped them in Coffs and the Nat Cap. With the team finishing a creditable 3rd outright in the Mitsubishi Evo 3 it will only be time before the young guns move up the ladder.
Several stand out results saw the team of Chris Giddins/Damian Grahame in the Mitsubishi Evo 2 come in a creditable 6th outright in what was a limited campaign by Chris and Damian. Looks like there is still some life left in the Evo 2, now the overheating problems have been solved.
Peter Neal in the Subaru WRX once again put in a good year with the 2 DNFÃs stopping his move up the championship table. A 4th outright was a great result for Peter. We look forward to seeing Peter return in 2011 with a little more development the Subaru will give the Mitsubishi teams a hurry up.
The 2WD Barry Ferguson Trophy was contested by several crews during the year with the winning combination of John and Andrew Sparkes again taking the honours. With the Peter Kolbold/James Thornburn team missing several events John and Andrew took a commanding lead in the 2WD Championship and were never headed with 2 rounds to go.
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