VW Polo driver Mick Patton might have had a short-lived run at the recent Quit Forest Rally but he’s hopeful that the hard work of his team will help other potential competitors see the value in contesting the East Coast Bullbars Australian Rally Championship.
Patton, based out of Canberra, acquired his South African built Volkswagen at the start of the 2013 season and campaigned it last year fitted with a high-revving normally-aspirated engine.
Unfortunately he found the going tough, with engine problems sidelining him at different stages during the year as he battled to extract the right mix of performance and reliability to suit the local conditions.
At the end of the season Patton petitioned the Australian Rally Commission (ARCom) to permit a change of engine to a factory standard 1.8 litre turbo-charged unit as fitted to the Polo GTi delivered in Australia. ARCom agreed on the condition a turbo restrictor was installed similar to the requirements imposed on the FIA-spec R3T cars.
“We put in a new proposal after Canberra for the turbo restrictor to be removed,” explained Patton after the team experienced serious overheating problems.
Patton argued that: “The point of going to standard turbo engine was to reduce costs, but by adding a restrictor you actually increase cost because you’re forced to develop the engine around the restrictor.”
ARCom saw the merit in an alternate approach, which would permit the removal of the restrictor, using only pump fuel and requiring the Polo to compete at the same weight as an over 3-litre G2 car in the ARC.
“Straight after Canberra we did a local test with the restrictor out but before we submitted the proposal. We wanted to make sure what we were asking for was going to work first,” said Patton.
“The weight increased the minimum for our car to 1260 kilograms, so we’ve had to add about 70 or 80 kilos to the car, however it has allowed us to add weight in a way that actually helps balance the car.”
“It’s all about creating parity between all the cars, and we agree with that completely. At the end of the day we want a diverse range of cars in the field that can push for victory.”
Patton is hopeful that the flexible approach ARCom has taken to permit use of a cheaper alternative to the homologated engine in the Polo will open the door for more drivers and teams to look at different car and engine combinations. This may in turn increase the outright competitor numbers at the front of the field.
“We hope the lessons we’ve learned and the process we’ve been through actually encourages others to come and compete in the sport. The last thing we want is competitors dwindling away because the rules are too inflexible” Patton said.
“We want to stay here, compete at the best of our ability and budget to be racing against anyone and everyone. In WA we raced against seven or eight guys, but we want to be racing against twenty-seven or twenty-eight guys, and hopefully we’ve helped a lot of others find the door is open for cheaper options to come and race on a level playing field.”
Unfortunately for Patton the hard work his Repco team had put in leading up to the second Round of the Championship in Western Australia quickly went up in flames, literally!
“Going into the second stage about four or five kilometre in, the car felt good and everything seemed fine, then the car cut out and the next thing we knew there were flames coming from the front of the bonnet!”
“Luckily enough we put the fire out, unfortunately in total we did about fifteen competitive kilometres for the weekend.”
“Motorsport is such a journey into the unknown, you can’t plan for these things, and you just have to learn to live with the setbacks. It was disappointing, it was a long way to go for very little, but we’ll learn a lesson out of it and rectify the problem to make sure it never happens again.”
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