Hello everyone, Well, what a fantastic weekend for The ITM Rally Team, the result completely exceeded my expectations. I had put in a massive amount of effort before the rally with two test days and a complete rebuild of the car, fitting this in around my job 50 hours a week! Luckily my manager Bill Hunter and I were able to head down to Nelson five days early to do some testing and I had some time to catch up on some pre-event rest.
We tested in Rotorua first, and after this test I felt we had made some improvements to the car's handling, but it still needed some fine tuning to make it perfect. When you get into a rally stage and the pressure is on, you find yourself driving a lot harder than you do in a test day and when I pushed, the car wasn't quite right, so Bill and I went away to have a think about the best set up. We made quite a few changes for the next test in Nelson before the rally and although the car didn't feel nice to drive, I felt that if I could get my head around driving it with that set up then it would be fast. This was the right call.
When my co-driver Paul Fallon and I lined up on the start line of the first stage, I told myself ‘just try your absolute best'. ‘We need to win this stage to set the pace, and ultimately, win the rally if we are going to have a shot at the title'. We were the first car on the road which is a disadvantage as we would be sweeping clean the loose gravel, however we absolutely stormed through Special Stage 1, 48 seconds faster than our closest championship rival Emma Gilmour who was on the road immediately behind us. We had the right set up in the car and we continued on to win the next four stages and hold the rally lead by over a minute from past New Zealand champion Richard Mason at the end of Day 1. This gave us maximum points and really helped me to gain a lot of confidence. I really wanted to win day two to secure maximum points from the event, but Richard was not going to make it easy for me. We battled with him all the second day and it came down to the last stage of the rally to decide who was going to take the day win. Raines Road was a narrow twisty, rough and very tricky stage which would be suited to Richard's Subaru rally car. We had a slim 10 second lead for Day 2 and wanted the points. We charged as hard as we could, taking big risks on the last stage of the rally which is not ideal and not what I had planned on doing, however we got to the finish line two seconds faster than Richard and set a new stage record in the process. Not to mention the day win and the overall rally win. I'm so happy that we now have a car and a team that are capable of winning rallies against the best drivers in New Zealand. It has taken a few years to get to this level in the sport and it felt great to win through sheer speed and not because someone broke down in front of you and gifted us the win like what happened in Otago rally at the beginning of the year. Absolutely no one can say that we didn't deserve to win the Nelson Rally. We won 8 out of 12 stages and have set ourselves up nicely to take the title of New Zealand Rally Champion at the last round in Wairarapa in September. Regards Dean Sumner
NATIONALITY: Kiwi RESIDENCE: Rotorua FAVORITE SPARE TIME ACTIVITIES: Mountain Biking, Wake Boarding, Karting SHORT TERM GOAL: Win the New Zealand Rally Championship Drivers Title SEASON COMPETING IN NZRC: Eight DEANS RALLY CARS: Toyota Starlet, Mitsubishi EVO6, Mitsubishi EVO8, Mitsubishi EVO9 NZRC RALLY WINS: 4 NZRC RALLY PODIUMS: 10 INTERNATIONAL RALLIES COMPETED: 11
|
