Hyundai Getz at Rally SA

[John C]

The mighty Hyundai Getz arrived in South Australia
this afternoon and Team Gunnawyn Motorsport are looking
Forward to meeting many Excelrally people over the
Weekend

[danny]

Good luck to the team this weekend,hope Tony and Nikki have a great run, Danny and Ronnie Team Pink.

[HMCA]

Good luck to the team this weekend,hope Tony and Nikki have a great run, Danny and Ronnie Team Pink.

ditto!!!

Give the bogan hell:)

[Mooa42]

Thanks for the well wishes guys,

We had a good run and learnt a lot this weekend. The car ran faultlessly all weekend and only my over reliance on the brakes caused us some shuddering under braking for most of the weekend. Otherwise we gave it hell and it just purred all weekend long, (albeit a very quite purr). The only other issue was a flat intercom battery on the last stage of Saturday, Mount Crawford, I didn't realise Nikk had such loud voice hidden in there!

The car had been packed and ready for the rally since late June as John has been relaxing on holiday in the UK and flew into South Australia on the Friday morning while Nikk and I were doing reconnaissance of the stages.

With stages spread over a very large distance and only 3 stages repeated we worked out to cover all the stages twice for reconnaissance we would have to maintain an average speed of 60kmh for the whole distance, this was without stops for fuel and lunch! Luckily the organisers had arranged that you could purchase notes from Smoothline, (Burnie Webb and Steve Glenney) for $300. We decide that the price was worth it and that we could hopefully learn a lot from the notes that will help us do a better job of our own notes in the future. I have got to say this is turned out to be a great decision, the notes and what we learnt was amazing. The consistency of the notes gave me great confidence which grew and grew all weekend.

Even with the notes we still didn't get two runs through every stage. It was a huge day, almost 2 tanks of fuel used in the Excel reccie car and we started at 7am in the morning after an hour drive from our accommodation and finished, (read gave up) at 5pm before going to drivers briefing. There was no way we could have written our own, and no way Nikk could have then gone through them before the rally started at 7:30am the next day.

The weather on Friday for reccie was superb but overnight rain meant the first stage, (32ks) was wet and slippery and most of the corners were very fast, even for us! We/I struggled getting used to the notes, the roads and the muddy corners. I think it took us until about stage four before we really got in the swing of things. As a general summary of the roads in SA I would summarise it as; turns over crests at varying distances was a common attribute and this coupled with lots of fast flowing corners, (if you trusted your notes and the car!) So Saturday finished well, I wasn't completely happy with our overall performance and went to bed wanting to improve our fast corners with some more commitment.

On Sunday I had the extra aggression on board and was now hitting the faster corners with more confidence and speed, unfortunately my brain was also applying this aggression to the slower corners too, this resulted in some time wasting slides through corners, that I had been getting perfect the day before. As an example; on the Mount Crawford stage with lots of slow right angle corners, where we had been sans intercom the day before, we were some 10 sec slower. On the plus side, we are hoping to see some magic pictures of a flying Getz from the big jump in this stage! It felt like we were about 2 meters in the air, big thumbs up to the RS&SP suspension for handling this amazingly well too.

So with only service and the final 32 k stage to go I took a break and composed myself, I really wanted it all to come together on this stage and it did. The stage had lots of uphill coupled with fast corners so it was imperative for us to maintain our speed as any hesitation meant the car took a long time to rebuild that speed. I think we nailed it and given the same conditions and vehicle I don't think Seb Loeb himself would have beaten us by much, (Steven probably would have creamed us though!).

So for the whole weekend I think we probably nailed 3 stages, two on Saturday and 1 on Sunday, not that great from 14 but we certainly are learning a lot and of course our goal is to continue to grow our fitness and concentration to get this percentage up before the WRC round in Coffs. Can't wait!

Much thanks to Normie, Thomo and John for all their servicing efforts over the weekend, to John Doutch, Jimbo and Cathy and thanks to our sponsors Ferntree Gully Hyundai, Batronic Batteries, Gunnawyn Logistics, the Bendigo Tyre Centre and John Doutch Photographics.

It was also great to meet some fellow Excelers, Damo popped his head in the window to say g'day, Brian and Shane who have been flying the Excel rally series flag alone in SA for the last couple of years in Ross and Scott Allen's old white Excel, (with a lot better looking paint job) great to meet you all! I really like the camaraderie in the Excel community and the shared passion for cheap, competitive and reliable rallying. If anyone reading this ever sees us at an event please come and say g'day!

Finally thanks to Nikk for all her planning, reading and sitting next to me, plus her insightful feedback on my driving, especially over the jump, WHOA! what the hell are you doing?? 3 right, 3 right, 3right!

Tony

[johnd]

Getz in action!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/GetzSA6.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/GetzSA4.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/GetzSA8.jpg

[johnd]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/GetzSA2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/GetzSA5.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/GetzSA9.jpg


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v74/lancerjohn26/GetzSA7.jpg

[Col Vic]

Flat intercom battery - you should have had some of those fantastic BATRONIC batterys.
(Blatant plug for the Victorian Excel Series Sponsor!!)
Col