Bega Valley Rally

[John C]

Good turn out of Excels 9 in total made for a great weekend. We had an informal meeting at The Great Southern Inn on the Sat afternoon with a really good roll up and Glen Farrant joined us :clap: for a short talk about Excels and it was great that Bean (Automotive Gadgets came along as well).

The only major incident for the weekend was a small offroad excursion by Mr Bob and Kate, it was really great to see them both released from hospital and back at the Eden Fishermens Club before the night was over.

Event Unofficial (very) Results Short course

1 Mackenzie / Mackenzie Vic
2 Horobin / Crowley NSW
3 Morrison / Wasson Vic
4 Byrne / Diggins Vic
5 Moore / Moore Vic
6 Andrei / Bonch NSW
7 Mcshane / Geering NSW
8 Thompson / Briede Vic

DNF Slattery / Murphy NSW


Event reports are expected from every one No exceptions !!!!!!!

[Mooa42]

Well the lead up wasn't looking good with massive amounts of rain in the area in the days before the event. Highways had collapsed, causing diversions at Morwell and landslides and trees down around Cann River which caused long delays on the highway for the Victorian crews who made the trek. Despite this dreary lead up we were greeted with a pleasant crisp Sunday morn for the rally.

Earlier rain had caused a major re-route and re-write of the road book from the intended roads and then the last minute downpour, (they say due to the ash clouds in Chille!) meant the organisers had to go through and drop certain stages and redo large sections of the road book the night before the rally! Hats off to the organisers for this massive task and the late night finalising this.

Anywho, with all the weather in the back of our minds we headed to Stage 1 expecting a wet and slippery introduction to the rally, what we got was a beautiful 14k blast through some very dry and grippy roads. Stage 2 was cancelled and so a 70 odd k liaison to Stage 3 saw us take in some beautiful roads and scenery and I am sure all the drivers wished it was a stage, beautiful wide roads and hills.

Stage 3 was 22km and extremely fast with some slippy corners. The roads seemed easy enough to read, (to us anyway) and to get an idea of the speeds, we averaged 91kmh on a wet stage in an Excel, it was fast and great fun!

Stage 4 was about 20ks and the roads were starting to get slippier. I think we were about 15ks into this stage when at a caution road goes left then hard to see hard right we slid a bit wide (at what was about 10kmh I think) and tapped a small rut which caused the front tyre to deflate, it wasn't major so we continued on through the stage and changed it on liaison to service.

Stage 5 was a 17k stage with a creek crossing. We had all been warned about the crossing at drivers briefing, stop and drive through in first was the warning, in hindsight maybe we still hit it too hard, we stopped and went to first and hit it hard enough to float through to the other side and get the wheels up on the bank to drive out, but alas an unseen rock in the creek and a dip on the other side meant we ended up with our front wheel off the ground and a rock stuck under my foot well. Thank goodness for the mighty John D and Golly :clap: who managed to tow us out and to poor Nikki who had to wander through the foot high creek to put the triangles out and then back to get them, I know John D has a nice pic of this. We drove out of the way and got all harnessed up and tried to see through our steamed up windscreen, we stopped again to clear the screen and let the following cars through before heading off after Mr Bob went past. Towards the end of stage Mr Bob pulled to the side to let us past, (which I thought was strange because we weren't catching him) across the finish line we found why he had let us past, Mr Bob came across the finish with bonnet over the windscreen and still with the foot in! Nice work.

Back to service and to put some fuel in. The usually frugal Excel was slurping up fuel like it had never done before, all these fast roads no doubt. Thanks to Matt Searle from team Fro for getting us some more fuel .

After service and into heat two for the Vic section of the rally we headed to Stage 6. It was diabolical. The roads were practically all squishy unreadable piles of mud plus downhill with big drops, not nice. 400 metres from the end we came across Mr Bob in a nasty situation; we are glad to hear that you and Kate are ok and hope the car didn't suffer too much.

Stage 7 was a short 9 k blast on some tighter sandy roads, quite a contrast to Stage 6 but good to get back in the groove. Stage 8 was 18ks and a cross of tight and open sections coupled with some slippy corners too, I thought we had a good run on this stage but the times say otherwise, from here it was back to service and the end of the short course and the interstate Excel challenge, we had blown any chances by parking in the creek but still enjoyed the challenge. A great drive from Steven to take the win and Fro for a close second. Well done guys!

At service my "you beaut, easy peasy light setup" caused more than its usual headaches for the service crew, (I will have to fix that before the next one!) after service there was supposed to be 2 stages but the weather had caused the cancellation of the 34k stage and left us with a return run through Stage 1 in the reverse direction. Amazingly this stage had remained dry throughout the day and it was a great way to finish the rally.

All in all, we enjoyed the rally, bar Stage 6 and kept thinking how great and fast all the stages would have been in the dry. It really would have been legendary in the dry, oh well, maybe next year.

Many thanks to John Carney for his service and for organising the Excel shin dig on Saturday night, sorry I didn't get to catch up with everyone but it was good to hear the passion that exists in the NSW series and good to see some new faces in the mix. Great to hear from the legendary Fazz too, I think we all collectively agreed that no one is allowed to purchase his car in the hope he will come back and have a go with us all soon.:clap:

A huge thanks also to the following people for helping us out at a wet, soggy and muddy service, Andrew Daniell, Barry Farnell, Leigh Garrioch and of course Sir John Carney.

A final thanks to Nikki, for putting up with all my driving, when I know she hates the slippy mud, and for having to endure the drenched suit and shoes from wandering through the creek with the triangles.
Tony

PS if you haven't looked they had a great live timing system set up, you can click on any series to see results and then click on a drivers stage time and it will give you a map of the stage, start time, finish time, sec per k, elapsed time and ave ks. Great innovation and great software.
http://bega.rallytiming.com/

[Wassa]

As Tony said, it was a great rally with a great mix of road conditions.

On the last stage, which was done in darkness, we had a true blind rally. 2 ks into the stage my map light failed and I was in total darkness. Peter did a great job driving the section blind, as I was not able to read the roadbook and give any calls.
Looking at the times, he probably doesn't need me, except as ballast :lmao:.

Well done to everyone :clap: . It was a great event and the extra competition added to the fun.

Now we just have to wait for our allocated times for section 6 (for the 6 Excels after Mr Bob). We hope that the Mexicans get real good times (better than any of those cockroaches :spank:).

Hope to see some of the Cockroaches coming to visit us in Victoria for some extra rallying.

[Steve]

From Arriving in Eden on Wednesday it seemed as though Sunday wasn?t going to be very much fun, or the event to even go ahead, with a constant drizzle of rain that didn?t seem to want to leave. While constantly keeping an eye on the weather forecast praying that it would clear up. Thankfully Saturday morning we finally saw some sun light, but it wasn?t to last for long before the clouds and rain came again. And after hearing Murray wasn?t in great shape and would not be attending the event the forecast for the weekend became a lot drearier.

Thankfully after a few tests Dad was then released from hospital Saturday morning with the all clear. Although then with no way to get to Eden it was back to Bendigo where I?m sure his heart was racing for the entire time until that call to say, ?We finished!?.

Anyway Sunday finally came, and now with the service crew halved keeping the car straight and giving Barry as little to do as possible was the main objective. Well Tony?s stage by stage summary seems to include ever little detail, so I might just add a few areas I can clearly remember.
Stage 1 seemed magic, a great smooth road with a bunch of grip
Stage 3 then seemed to just loose all that grip and I was really having to make sure the car was slowed to get it turned in.
Stage 4 I?m not to sure what we did special there, but somehow we manage to post 14 fasted stage time outright
Stages 5 The creek crossing, slow and steady :)
Stage 6-8 were all very simular fast roads with very little grip
Stage 10 From out of nowhere GRIP! for the first time all event, with just over 7km from the finish we really experienced this, flicking the car in to find that it was actually going where we wanted for once, resulting in a big cut which thankfully only contained shrub

Finally from what began as a seemingly dismal weekend became my proudest result to date. But without the help of so many people it could have been a challenging weekend. Massive thanks to Barry Farnell for virtually replacing Dad for the weekend, towing the car to and from the event, helping Brent with the roadbook, and his always much appreciated servicing. John Carney and the many Excel enthusiasts for the support and servicing, was a great help and lifted a lot of the already piled tasks from Barry.

As always many thanks to Moro and Dooley, Bendigo Tyre Centre, Bendigo Specialist Brake and Clutch, Car Part Recyclers and Northern Victorian Assessors.

[thommo 73]

what a weekend..what can i say really everyone has covered the most part of it.

ss1 was a good one, got a 1min penatly (not sure what for but was told it was the start controllers stuff up and could fix)

ss2 also got a penatly of a minute see above ^,

ss3 started off really well but about 4k's in i started a little wide on a corner and found all the mud that had been thrown to the outside line.
meaning we glanced a tree putting the lhf wheel into the firewall and stopping most forward movement, deciding the damage was to bad to continue we pulled of the road and started to try and get to at least move,
so off come the wheel put the jack in and bent the control arm forward enough to see us to the end of the stage and then on to service missing ss4.

John.C and crew jumped in at service and replace the front control arm and cable tied the bumper and off we went to rejoin heat 2. (HUGE thanks to John.c and co for thier help during the event.)

the rest of the rally we played it safe so that we could atleast get some points for the rally and finish even if we got a 5min penalty on ss6

the last stage was my pick of the rally, it had been alot dryier than all the other stages and east gippy and once i had figured it out i had a ball.

we leant ALOT from bega and had a good time.

got away from the tree reasonably well, damage was a front gaurd, control arm, headlight and indicater, the bumper i will reuse and the wheel isnt bent and balanced up fine :clap:

look forward to seeing you all at AVOCA in 5 weeks

[johnd]

Just a few pics from Bega..........SS9 was cancelled at the last minute, so not a lot of the usual pics!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/bb059.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/bb099.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/bb0107.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/sm02.jpg

[johnd]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/bb078.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/bb074.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/pb02.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/sm01.jpg

[johnd]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/bb039.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/pb01.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/bb041.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/bb0103.jpg

[johnd]

Tony, I have an interesting series of pics of your car making its way across the creek underwater, which I will email to you when I can get a minute. :biggrin:

[fro]

It was great to get back in the Excel again.

Fantastic drive by Steve and Brent, and a great drive by Tony and Nikki with a few unfortunate issues that dropped them in the results.

I was a massive sook, and really never found a good rhythm the whole event. I was disappointed in myself, but thankful that I found enough speed to pull out a decent result. Big props to Ryan McShane and Daniel Geering, who set times that show me I'll have to up my game in future.

Thanks to AJ and Nicole Crowley, Matt Searle and my gorgeous wife Naomi for getting me to, through and home from the event.

Also big thanks to John Carney, Col Hardinge and all the Excel crews for making it a great weekend and I'm keen to get out there and do a few more Excel events through the rest of the year.

[greasystick]

Thanks again to JD for the brilliant pics of the event. Now for some footage from the inside of the car

Stage One - Grip!! Something we didn't see for the rest of the day....

http://youtu.be/aNWQ_ic5o-I

Stage Four - The water crossing from the inside of the car...

http://youtu.be/oN3jDOcOgQo

Both video's are available in 720p HD if you have a fast connection and a big screen!! Hope you enjoy the footage!

Brilliant event, and good to catch up with some Excel competitors from that strange place up north.

Big thanks to JC and Leigh for service on the day, and to JB for driving very well given the evil conditions that were apparent on the stages.

See you all at Avoca!

Stu.