Team Mitsubishi Ralliart’s Scott Pedder and Glen Weston are out to win the final round of the NEC Australian Rally Championship in Melbourne’s Yarra Valley – and they will have special support in that quest.
Pedder and Weston will drive TMR’s turbocharged, all-wheel-drive Evolution IX Mitsubishi Lancer in the NGK Rally of Melbourne on September 22-24 with support from global communications leader Motorola.
Having won heats at each of the past three rounds of the championship, an outright victory for the weekend in Melbourne is well within the grasp of the TMR combination.
The Evo IX was the quickest car on both days of the recent Rally SA but a blown turbocharger at the start of the second heat denied Pedder and Weston the chance to repeat their first-heat win there and last year’s outright success in that rally.
The Yarra Valley is a “home game” for Pedder, who lives in Melbourne and is the Marketing Manager of his family’s business, Pedders Suspension at Keysborough, close to TMR’s headquarters at Dandenong.
Weston is from Brisbane, where he is an endodontist, or root canal specialist.
Pedder first won a heat of the ARC at the 2003 Rally of Melbourne as a Mitsubishi privateer in his then family-run team before becoming the Mitsubishi Ralliart factory team driver in 2005.
While he and Weston have only a slight mathematical chance of taking this year’s ARC title at the final round they are overdue for an outright victory and are keen to upstage the other contenders – Simon and Sue Evans and Neal Bates and Coral Taylor in Toyotas and Dean Herridge and Bill Hayes in a Subaru - as they battle among themselves.
“The Evo IX is brilliant,” Pedder said. “We’ve been on the pace all year, we’ve won heats at three rounds in a row, and at the two most recent rallies we’ve had a really good tyre package from Pirelli. There’s nothing left now but to go all out for a round win in Melbourne.
“It is great to have the support of a company as passionate and dedicated as Motorola. If we win the rally we will be telling the world about it on the new MOTOSLVR L7 mobile phones! Collaboration with companies like Motorola is vital to our sport and we greatly appreciate their support.
“Sponsorships are vital in a sport like rallying and we hope to build a mutually beneficial long-term relationship with the company.”
Mr Nick Mann, the Marketing Director, South-East Asia, Motorola Mobile Device Business, said: “It is great to be involved with Scott and Glen - and the Australian Rally Championship, where we can further prove the power of the Motorola product in the harshest of environments.”
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