Having claimed fourteen of the fifteen stages contested at last weekend’s International Rally of Queensland Scott Pedder believes that the pressure he felt to secure a win has now flipped back onto Brendan Reeves as the Championship reaches its halfway point.
 

Pedder admitted going into Queensland that he was feeling the burden of turning his pace into results, after proving the faster driver at both Canberra and West Australia, only to see his hard fought leads evaporate because of technical dramas.
 
“If you’ve had a career like mine you just can’t afford to get down on yourself too much,” he said. “Even if you’ve had a bad result you try to draw out the positives, and the positive was we’d won almost every stage in Canberra and WA, and it was only something small that stopped us from getting the win.”
 
“It was really just teething problems with the car that cost us during the first two events of the year, and that’s not unexpected working with a new team and trying to develop the car at the same time,” said Scott. “The problem in WA was purely unlucky.”
 
So with Reeves ahead in the points Pedder arrived in Queensland with a game plan to win every stage, and in turn either push Reeves into making an error or force the Mazda driver to have to settle for second place.
 
In the end Pedder claimed each and every stage win apart from the Woodland stage on Sunday morning, which Reeves claimed by just one second.
 
“We’ve probably won four out of every five stages run over the first three events, so we know the pace is there,” Scott commented.
 
“I think the pressure is now back on Brendan. He’s going to have to find probably half a second a kilometre based on the last two events, in order for him to keep up with us.”
 
Pedder put the result in Queensland down to the hard work undertaken by the team at Walkinshaw Racing. “The guys have done such a terrific job between WA and Queensland, they really used that ten week break to perfect a lot of little areas with the car. That’s why Walkinshaw is so good at what they do because they bring all that knowledge and experience from their race team and bring it over to us.”
 
With just under five weeks until the next Round of the East Coast Bullbars Australian Rally Championship in South Australia, Pedder is up beat about tackling the notoriously fast shire roads.
 
“Queensland was a terrific weekend, and the good thing is its setup now to do South Australia.,” he commented.
 
“And I think particularly with South Australia it’s an event that’s going to suit me very, very well. So for Brendan he can’t continue just to drive through at a consistent pace, he’s going to have to up the pace otherwise he’s going to find himself with a points deficit come Rally Australia.”

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