Whitey
05-01-2007, 09:21 PM
Crazy Dave takes old smokie to victory.
The 2006 GK Denney Coffs Coast Rally consisted of 10 Special Stages with roads in perfect condition following rain earlier in the week leading up to the rally. The rally started with the usual spectator stage around the car park of the Big Banana, a huge crowd of spectators was on hand to see the cars go thru their paces on the motorkana style stage. Glenn Farrant took an early lead completing the course in 38 seconds. All the other Excels all set an identical time of 39 seconds. After a quick tyre change it was into the forest stages.
Stage 2 & 3 saw Mick Gillett/Harvey Smith take an early lead, as Dave & Mark Roberts suffered from a drowned engine from a huge water splash on stage 3. Stage 4 "Sherwoods" a 16km high speed stage saw Glenn Farrant and Crazy Dave Roberts set equal fastest times and peg back Gillett's lead to 5 seconds.
At the service at Nana Glen, Gillett led from Farrant and Roberts third.
At this service break the event was to go wrong for Farrant who was unable to restart his car to leave the service area. Eventually the car fired after being towed around the service park behind Mick Gillett's Tucson. Farrant making it out of service with two minutes late time to spare. Unfortunately the car would not run at high revs and Glenn was to retire from his second event this year at the following Service.
The next three stages were repeats of the previous three and with Roberts and Gillett swapping stage times Gillett/Smith leading the Roberts brothers by a single second. However as a result of a scoring error Gilllett believed he had a comfortable 2min 1 sec lead and decided to back off a little to ensure he scored valuable series points.
The final three stages saw the Roberts drown their car in the water splash yet again giving Mick Gillett a 4 second stage win on SS8. After an interesting transport section with 4WDs standing by to tow stranded cars Roberts went on to win the final two stages.
Once the scoring issue was resolved the Roberts brothers had fulfilled the promise shown at the previous round and become the third different round winner this year, winning by 28 seconds from Gillett / Smith with White/Langslow a distant third.
With two rounds to run Mick Gillett has one hand on the trophy with 76 points, David White 2nd on 62 points and Glenn Farrant 3rd with 44 points (unadjusted pointscores) The Codriver pointscores are Harvey Smith 64 points Alex Pisarev 2nd on 34 points (all unadjusted pointscores)
The crews have just two weeks to turn their cars around for the next round (Rd 5) at Batemans Bay on September 16.
The 2006 GK Denney Coffs Coast Rally consisted of 10 Special Stages with roads in perfect condition following rain earlier in the week leading up to the rally. The rally started with the usual spectator stage around the car park of the Big Banana, a huge crowd of spectators was on hand to see the cars go thru their paces on the motorkana style stage. Glenn Farrant took an early lead completing the course in 38 seconds. All the other Excels all set an identical time of 39 seconds. After a quick tyre change it was into the forest stages.
Stage 2 & 3 saw Mick Gillett/Harvey Smith take an early lead, as Dave & Mark Roberts suffered from a drowned engine from a huge water splash on stage 3. Stage 4 "Sherwoods" a 16km high speed stage saw Glenn Farrant and Crazy Dave Roberts set equal fastest times and peg back Gillett's lead to 5 seconds.
At the service at Nana Glen, Gillett led from Farrant and Roberts third.
At this service break the event was to go wrong for Farrant who was unable to restart his car to leave the service area. Eventually the car fired after being towed around the service park behind Mick Gillett's Tucson. Farrant making it out of service with two minutes late time to spare. Unfortunately the car would not run at high revs and Glenn was to retire from his second event this year at the following Service.
The next three stages were repeats of the previous three and with Roberts and Gillett swapping stage times Gillett/Smith leading the Roberts brothers by a single second. However as a result of a scoring error Gilllett believed he had a comfortable 2min 1 sec lead and decided to back off a little to ensure he scored valuable series points.
The final three stages saw the Roberts drown their car in the water splash yet again giving Mick Gillett a 4 second stage win on SS8. After an interesting transport section with 4WDs standing by to tow stranded cars Roberts went on to win the final two stages.
Once the scoring issue was resolved the Roberts brothers had fulfilled the promise shown at the previous round and become the third different round winner this year, winning by 28 seconds from Gillett / Smith with White/Langslow a distant third.
With two rounds to run Mick Gillett has one hand on the trophy with 76 points, David White 2nd on 62 points and Glenn Farrant 3rd with 44 points (unadjusted pointscores) The Codriver pointscores are Harvey Smith 64 points Alex Pisarev 2nd on 34 points (all unadjusted pointscores)
The crews have just two weeks to turn their cars around for the next round (Rd 5) at Batemans Bay on September 16.