Evans tested the new Mazda on a rally stage north of Sydney and declared he was very excited by the new car proclaiming the build quality of the Rallyschool-constructed machine as good as many of the factory team rally cars he has driven in his career.
"I was really excited to finally get behind the wheel of the Mazda 2 today, I was sick of talking about it, I just wanted to drive it," declared Evans.
"It's very good straight out of the box, Mick Ryan and his team have done a fantastic job and I can't wait to get to Rally of Queensland and drive it on full rally stage," he added.
Evans spent the day dialing the car in to his personal preferences, fine-tuning the MCA Suspension, bedding in the new Project Mu brakes, and setting the seats up to his own requirements.
"The car is a credit to them and Mick has brought together some of the best rally car engineering expertise in the country, and it shows," said Simon.
Rallyschool team principal, Mick Ryan, brought together some of the best rally engineering brains in the country to build the new Mazda 2 MZR G2 car after coming up with the idea in late October last year. The team took delivery of a Mazda 2 in January and built the car from a clean sheet of paper to rally ready machine in less than five months.
The project has been formulated and overseen by engineer Dave Loftus, who has extensive experience with front drive race cars and was built at Darren Williams' DashSport workshops in Dural near Sydney with former Ford works fabricator and mechanic, John Gray, handling much of the build, along with Gareth Stokes and the DashSport personnel.
Murray Coote, the last man to win the Australian Rally Championship in a Mazda, winning the title in a Mazda 323 Familia in 1988, has played an integral part in the development of the new Rallyschool Mazda 2. Coote, the principal of MCA Suspension and now a world-renown rally suspension expert, has developed suspension for the new car.
Evans was glad to have the shakedown ahead of this weekend's first competition outing having spent much of the last two years concentrating on his concreting business.
"The last time I drove on gravel was Rally Victoria last year in the old Subaru, and since then its all been tarmac in a Mazda 3 MPS on Targa and various tarmac events so it was great to be back on the slippery stuff in this very exciting little car," he added.
"I have to take my hat off to Dave Loftus and the boys from RallySchool and DashSport, they have done a great job," declared Evans.
Mick Ryan declared he was very proud and relieved to see Simon behind the wheel of the new Mazda 2 MZR after a very busy five month build.
"Finally the idea we had to build an outright two wheel drive ARC car back in October last year has become reality," said Mick Ryan.
"We are all looking forward to seeing him behind the wheel at the Rally of Queensland this week however we are not getting ahead of ourselves, and we will do another test at Imbil on Wednesday and make a call on whether to start the car in the rally on the weekend," he added.
"We don't want to run the car unless both the team and Simon are 100 per cent happy with it, it would be silly to run it if we discover some teething or development problem that might set the program back," he said.
'Having said that, we are confident that the test will be very positive and the car will be right to run on the weekend," he added.
"I felt very privileged when Simon agreed to join the team and particularly privileged that he was the first person to drive the car," said Mick Ryan.
 "Simon has driven in small family run teams as well as having been the number one driver in factory backed outfits and has fitted into our team extremely well."
"Simon has won Australian titles driving Toyotas, a Mitsubishi and a Subaru, perhaps his fifth Australian Championship crown could be with our team in a fourth different brand," declared Mick.
"I have to thank Dave, John, Gareth, along with Darren and the boys at DashSport for painstakingly hand-building this Mazda 2, taking an Idea in my head to full house rally car in such a relatively short time," he added.
The Rallyschool Mazda 2 is powered by a normally aspirated two-litre Mazda MZR engine mated to an Australian designed and built Hollinger six speed motor sport gearbox powering the front wheels with MCA suspension all round, siting on Speedline Racing wheels from FSport with Kumho rally tyres.
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