72 cars in rally

Press, 9 May 1985, Page 27

72 cars in rally

The Christchurch-based Autosport club has received an excellent entry of 72 cars for this week-end’s Mainfreight/ 3ZM rally. The rally will be run over three legs, each of which will comprise three special stages. The total distance will be 600 km with 250 km made up of special stages. Competitors will encounter a wide variety of road surfaces from tarseal to grass. Dust is expected to create a hazard.

Although the rally will officially start at the event headquarters of Mainfreight Transport at 11.50 a.m. on Saturday, the first special stage will get under way on the ever-popular sealed Northern Summit Road at 12.25 p.m. Following this stage competitors will travel to the Paringa block of the Ashley Forest to start the first of the remaining eight stages

on predominantly gravel sur ; faces.

The rally comprises the second regional round of the CRC New Zealand national rally championship and is also the fourth round of the Mainland rally series. Unlike previous years, there is no obvious outright favourite for this year’s event. The No. 1 seeding has been given to the South Island champion, Inky Tulloch, of Mataura, driving an Escort RS. Tulloch, however, suffered a serious accident on the West Coast rally earlier this season and the event will be a test of both the driver and his rebuilt car in Tulloch’s first rally since the accident. The No. 2 seed, Barry Robinson, of Wyndham, will be remembered for his performance on last year’s televised Dunlop Rallysprint. Should Robinson’s sinister black Chevette prove reliable he will have every chance of repeating his success

in the Gore rally earlier this season.

The local favourite, Brian Stokes, of Waikuku, will also be looking for mechanical reliability from his variation of the Escort RS theme. The 1983 South Island champion, Stokes is highly rated in the Canterbury area and will be looking to do well in his home rally. Of the rest, Hugh Owen, of Blenheim, and Les Harris, of Greymouth, will be ready to take up the front running with their Escort RS models should the first three falter.

The performance of the highly regarded Aucklander, Ray Wilson, will be watched with interest, as Wilson has been seeded ninth for the rally in his mildly modified Group A Toyota Starlet. On past results the little car could prove an embarrassment to some drivers of the high-powered cars by the end of the event.