An old BMW attacking the gravel.

Saturday 15th July
The only stage that we got to see on the Saturday was Stage 12, Parahi Ararua. It was 59km Long. The longest in the rally. We drove into the stage, and found a corner where there is normally a bit of action.

In all major rally events held on public roads, safety cars have to come through prior to the rally cars to check if the stage is clear. There are three safety cars, first one to come through is number 000, followed by 00, then 0 (for obvious reasons these cars are called the 'zero cars'). When 00 came through for track inspection, the driver ran the car's left-rear tyre over the edge of the road (a steep bank is off to the left of the road at this right-hand corner), but being 4WD, he managed to pull back onto the road. He had everyone at the corner screaming with laughter! Was this a sign of things to come?..........

First through the stage was Petter Solberg! He was scheduled to run after Delecour but apparently Delecour had run into gearbox problems, which had forced him to retire! Solberg took the corner hugging the inside the whole way through (so he didn't run close to the edge). All the main drivers made it through ok (there was a couple of close calls). One driver jammed his brakes on and stopped about half a metre from the edge!

Two historic casualties. One car was extensively damaged but no one was hurt in either crash.

When the Historic cars came through, two drivers got it wrong and went off, one rolled down the bank. Both were Ford Escorts, (see the photos) and thankfully the drivers and co-drivers were all OK. It was a good bit of action for a while there!

Back to the top drivers......Fastest on the stage was Richard Burns, the leader of the rally was now Marcus Gronholm. We capped the day off with Greg Brown's (one of my crew members) 40th birthday party at PG Hydraulics. Happy Birthday old man! Also managed to catch the Australia vs New Zealand rugby test.

Sunday 16th July

Francois Delecour sliding through the turn.

Another early start for us, as we wanted to get into the stage before it started. There was a joining road, that connected one stage with another, we were keen to get in there so we could get to see both stages, we managed to talk our way into being allowed onto the road. As it happened we were the only spectactor car!

The first stage was stage 19. We watched only a few cars through there, and then drove down the road to see stage 20. All we had to do to get to stage 21 was drive back up the road again! We had managed to get an excellent viewing position.

We had a bit of fun when went from stage 19 to 20. We met up with an Australian (from Sydney) who had just come over for the weekend to watch the rally! We had some good conversations with him about the rugby test etc and it was funny that he couldnt quite understand how big the game is in New Zealand (he was surprised to see so much of it on television here). He thought it was amazing that seemingly the whole population of New Zealand followed the sport.

Finally at the end of the day it was back to Manukau for the rally finish, which is held at the Velodrome! It was awesome!

Eventual winner Marcus Gronholm.

The rally of New Zealand...Placings
1st Marcus Gronholm (Finland) Peugeot
2nd Colin Mcrae (GB) Ford Focus
3rd Carlos Sainz (Spain) Ford Focus
4th Petter Solberg (Norway) Ford Focus
5th Kenneth Eriksson (Sweden) Hyundai
6th Possum Bourne (NZ)

The rally was really enjoyable to watch this year as some of the big names went out fairly early on in the running, which opened the rally up for some close competition.

I am already looking forward to the next one!

See you all at the Springs,

STEViE

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