Molly Taylor has re-written the Australian Rally Championship record books by becoming the first female Heat winner in the sports history in a day that saw competitors bloodied and bruised from the very outset, with the notorious West Australian gravel playing a large part in driver’s fortunes.
Molly Taylor with her jubliant mum, Coral, after her maiden ARC heat win.The drivers lined up for the first stage and immediately there were problems for overnight leader Simon Evans, a problematic driveshaft forcing him back into service and resulting in a 45-second penalty.
“We changed the dampers for the gravel and one of the drive shafts didn’t engage properly, but I didn’t realise until I was pulling out of service. So I turned around, came back in and we got some time penalties,” explained Simon.
Eager to catch up time Evans powered through the first stage to set the fastest time by 2.5 seconds over Molly and younger brother Eli. With the time penalty Simon had dropped back to seventh outright, handing the lead to a surprised Adrian Coppin.
It was to be a short lived moment of glory for Coppin, who under steered on a slow corner midway through the second stage of the day, Ferndale, a beaching his Citroen DS3 off the road.
“I just came too fast into the corner,” rued Adrian. “It’s frustrating after such a great start last night!”
With Coppin dropping significant time, the lead was handed to former Citroen cohort Tony Sullens. Further down the field the Ferndale stage was proving problematic, especially one off-camber corner just after the start.
First Eli Evans ran wide and found his Citroen airborne in a deep ditch before limping back out and through the stage, losing almost 33 seconds. Then brother Simon had a narrow escape at the same corner, power sliding down the length of the ditch but managing to escape unscathed.
Justin Dowel in his 4WD Mitsubishi had a similarly close run, before local Subaru driver John O’Dowd came off the hardest hit when he shunted heavily into the bank beyond the ditch and breaking the steering on his Impreza.
“It’s my fault,” he said shaking his head. “ I feel terrible, the boys worked until 4am taking the car back to Perth to change a piston, so to come out this morning and do this is just the worst!”
At the mid-morning service Sullens couldn’t believe his luck. “It’s crazy isn’t it, let’s call it off now!” he joked. “The last stage was the best I’ve driven it, it just felt good.”
The dramas for her competitors had allowed Molly to sit in second behind Sullens, and after the disappointment of crashing at yesterday morning’s ARMOR ALL & STP Power Stage she was thrilled with the position.
Molly Taylor and Bill Hayes on their way to an historic win.“A bit surprised I guess,” she said. “To be honest we were in our zone and doing our thing and I’m planning to keep doing that.”
In the 4WD’s Justin Dowel was on the back foot, a turbo problem gradually getting worse and worse as the morning went on. “It started last night. We started loosing boost and then developed a really big exhaust manifold leak,” he said.
With Dowel out for the morning to effect repairs and Mark Pedder struggling in his Super 2000 Polo a tight tussle had developed between local aces Dylan King and Doug Tostevin, with Doug holding the advantage by 7.5 seconds.
“I can’t put my finger on what’s working so well, I think we just have the car really well sorted and a great team behind me. Basically I’m just doing what I love doing,” smiled Doug.
Back on the stages the leading crews were determined to reach the midday service intact, unfortunately game plans often go astray and the field was quickly thrown into disarray again.
Eli Evans was forced to arm wrestle his Citroen to the end of the Ellis stage when he clipped a rock on the road and ended up with a flat tyre with five kilometres of the stage left to go.
Meanwhile for older brother Simon a faulty crank sensor was forcing him to work overtime to just keep the car going. “Basically the car shuts down, it happened three times, and to get it going again I’ve got to kill the battery power and force the computer to reboot itself,” said Simon.
Early pace setter Sullens had dropped back to second after he struggled to even hear co-driver Julia Barkley with a dodgy intercom, while fellow Citroen driver Adrian Coppin found that his day went from bad to worse when he rolled.
“It was a five right over crest, I ran wide and it rolled into a tree and ended up on its roof. We’re just a bit worried about the engine and gearbox having sat for over an hour upside down, that can cause real issues,” explained a downcast Adrian.
Steve Mackenzie was similarly in a downcast mood when his Fiesta ground to a halt with a failed fuel pump. “It let go mid-stage. It had started playing up before hand, which made it hard to commit when you didn’t know if it was going to cut out or not.”
Mark Pedder was back up and running in his Polo and managed to set the fastest time on both midday stages, while in the lead of the National 4WD’s Dylan King had leap frogged Doug Tostevin into the lead by 4.3 seconds.
“Been a while since I’ve been in the car, so first two stages today took a bit of time to get used to it,” explained King. “Had a bit of an attack in those last ones and managed to get back in the lead again from Doug.”
With just four further stages to make up the day the field was continuing to drop likes flies. Sullens was the next to join the retirements list when he rolled his Citroen out. “Eight corners into the stage, a tightening right hander with a hump on the inside, I tried to avoid the hump and just ran out of road.”
“The car rolled twice and ended up backwards in a bunch of blackberries. I tried to get it out, we’d made it about 50 metres back up to the edge of the road but just couldn’t get it back out,” Sullens added.
After their respective dramas earlier in the day both Simon and Eli Evans were in catch up mode and swapped fastest times on the final four stages, with Eli moving up to second and Simon ending up fourth behind local driver Razvan Vlad.
At the end of the day though Molly Taylor stayed level headed even with a late drama of her own to contend with when the steering on her Renault Clio suddenly failed on the road section to the penultimate stage.
“This is not at all what I was expecting when I started this rally,” beamed an ecstatic Molly at the final service of the day. “To be honest I didn’t have any expectations this weekend, I just wanted to get through to the finish.”
“The car felt really good all day, and when we got the lead I just wanted to stay calm and not over think it. But we’re also very, very lucky! The steering failed on the road as we arrived at the second last stage,” added Molly who managed, with co-driver Bill Hayes, to jerry-rig the broken steering with a snatch strap to get them through to the final service and victory.
“I knew the car was good, Scott Pedder proved that last year, it was up to me to live up to how good it is. I want to thank him (Scott) and all the boys who have helped get me here this weekend. This result is truly the best way to repay them,” she added.
An overjoyed Molly arrived back into service to be greeted by long time supporters Neal Bates and her mother Coral Taylor. “I’m so proud of her, she’s set her mind to this result for so many years, and put in so much hard work. I just couldn’t be happier!” said Coral with a tear in her eye.
“The joke for so long was that everyone in rallying knew me as Coral’s daughter,” added Molly. “Now I think its time for that to change. Maybe people will start referring to mum as Molly’s mother!”
Second placed Eli was pleased enough with the result after a demanding first day for Citroen Team Australia. “Things were improving every stage and I’m starting to feel good in the car. I wanted to set some fast stage times and we managed to do that against some really fierce competition today.”
“I know I’ve still got a lot of work to do, but considering everything that happened today I’m happy with second and my aim now is to press on even harder tomorrow,” Eli continued.
The fourth and final finisher in a severely depleted 2WD was Simon Evans. “I rate it as a good day because I got to the finish,” he laughed. “There were problems but also lots of positives. We had a lot of challenges thrown at us, but in rallying I’ve learnt you never give up.”
“We went out on old tyres this afternoon as part of a plan to save a new set for tomorrow. It was a handful but we’ve now got a positive to look forward to. Our stages times though when the car is all singing and dancing is the bit I’m most happy about!” added Simon.
In the National 4WD’s Dylan King managed to cruise to a comfortable victory after his archrival for the day, Doug Tostevin, rolled his Subaru on the same corner that had caught out Simon, Eli, Dowel and O’Dowd earlier in the day.
“I had a great run,” smiled King. “Doug was flying, so it’s unfortunate that he rolled, a real shame for him but good for us. Even though we got today’s win we have a couple of concerns right now though, the engine is breathing a bit of smoke so we have to see if we can fix whatever’s going wrong.”
A completely trouble free day saw Neal Bates power slide to victory in the Classics, almost six minutes clear of the identical Toyota Celica of Clay Badenoch. “The biggest problem I had today was accidently switching the ignition off on a hairpin today. It took fifteen seconds for me to work out why it wouldn’t start up again,” said Bates.
For Badenoch, on his first time in Western Australia, said he wasn’t as shocked by the road conditions as he’d expected but still found the going incredibly slippery. “I spent the whole day looking for that swept line, and I never found it!”
Heat Two gets underway tonight with one pass around the Trade Hire Busselton Super Special Stage under lights, before a further eight forestry stages tomorrow completes the weekend’s action.
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