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MITSUBISHI
RALLIART PRESS RELEASE
October 31, 2005
Mitsubishi
Ralliart's Evolution VIII Lancer in Breakthrough Win at Rally of South
Australia.
- The new-look Team
Mitsubishi Ralliart and its driver combination of Scott Pedder and Glen
Weston have won in the Globalstar Australian Rally Championship for
the first time. Success came in the weekend’s Rally of South Australia,
the fourth round of the drivers’ championship, in which Pedder
and co-driver Weston took the team’s Evolution VIII Mitsubishi
Lancer to victory ahead of the Toyota Corolla of Neal Bates and Coral
Taylor and the Subaru Impreza of Cody Crocker and Dale Moscatt. Victory
was especially sweet on Mitsubishi’s “home ground”
in SA. The
Dodo-sponsored Evo VIII is the first outright contender in GARC competition
built by Team Mitsubishi Ralliart since it has been headed by Alan Heaphy,
who last year oversaw the preparation of the all-wheel-drive Mitsubishi
Magna VR-Xs that won the Australia Cup.
- The Rally of SA
outright victory was a breakthrough for both Pedder and Weston, although
Pedder had previously won heats of the championship. The pair won the
second heat of Rally SA by 8.4 seconds with a cluster of three cars
– the Subaru of Juha Kangas and Julia Rabbett, the Toyota of Bates
and Taylor, and the Subaru of Crocker and Moscatt – then within
1.3 seconds after 95.58km of competition in 10 stages.
- Saturday’s
first heat had been taken by Bates and Taylor by just 0.4 seconds from
Pedder and Weston after 105.4km, also in 10 stages. The
results of the two heats gave the Mitsubishi Ralliart pair 36 points
for the weekend and lifted them to second in the driver championships
behind Crocker and Moscatt.
- Pedder, 29, of
Melbourne, has shown great maturity in the past two events with a new
focus on keeping the Lancer much straighter rather than sideways on
the gravel. In SA he also had to battle against a stomach flu which
hit him early in the week and saw him in Tanunda Hospital in the Barossa
Valley for several hours on Tuesday night before the team’s pre-event
test. He was
restricted to a diet of toast and Vegemite most of the week and, while
still far less than 100 per cent physically on the weekend, admitted
that winning the rally made him feel “a lot better now”.
“It’s
an unexpected outcome, given how I have been feeling the past few days,
but the car has been exceptional and the effort by the team has been
very, very good,” Pedder said. He
has grown into his role as a factory team driver after several years
as a leading Mitsubishi privateer and his pairing with Weston has become
a winner after just half a season together.
- Team principal
Heaphy said the SA victory was a fitting reward for the drivers and
the small Mitsubishi Ralliart crew, which fields only one factory entry
in the championship on a much smaller budget than its rivals. “The
car, the driver and the co-driver performed faultlessly in achieving
this success,” Heaphy said. “We have always felt that the
car had the potential to be a winner and it’s a great thrill to
see it become that in a pretty short time. “Scott
drove superbly this weekend too. He did not put a foot out of place.
He was as professional as you could find any top-flight driver to be.
“We
‘rocked the boat’ with second place in Tasmania a few weeks
ago and now we’ve taken the next step. “It’s
a tremendously satisfying result because motor sport is always very
challenging - so many things can get in the way, can go wrong. “We’re
extremely happy but now there will be pressure to repeat this win. “We
want more success and we will work hard to get more. We’re not
going to get complacent.”
- Close studies of
television footage and stills photographs have played a big part in
Pedder’s improvement in the past two events, and in SA he also
drew added inspiration from the state’s Dakar Rally motorcycle
hero Andy Caldecott, who joined Pedder for a ride in the Evo VIII ahead
of the event. Pedder
was hugely relieved, after heat wins at the 2003 Rally of Melbourne
and the 2004 Forest Rally in Western Australia after Subaru driver Chris
Atkinson was disqualified, to have finally won a GARC round.
- Crocker’s
Subaru had won all the previous heats and rounds in WA, Queensland and
Tasmania this season but was third and fourth in the two SA heats. Pedder
had always felt the Evo VIII Lancer was a winner “and it all came
together – the car and us – this weekend”. “As
Alan Heaphy says, now we’ve had a taste of success we want more
of it,” Pedder said. Co-driver
Weston echoed that sentiment. “Hopefully we’ll be on the
top step of the podium for the rest of the season,” the Brisbane
endodontist (root canal specialist) said.
- Pedder is now second
in the drivers’ championship on 102 points to Crocker’s
149. Crocker’s teammate, Dean Herridge, is third on 88, followed
by Kangas on 72, Toyota’s Simon Evans on 70 and Bates on 63. Mitsubishi-supported
Jack Monkhouse and his co-driver Rebecca Cochrane finished ninth and
12th in the two SA heats for ninth overall on the weekend in the Evolution
VII Lancer that won two rounds of the 2003 championship.
- That result has
seen Monkhouse drop from seventh to ninth in the championship on 30
points after his strong fifth places outright in Queensland and Tasmania.
However, it was almost a miracle that he and the Evo VII made it to
the SA event after the car was badly damaged when hit by a road train
while being towed back to Adelaide from the Tasmanian round. “Considering
what we’ve been through in the past month or so, we’re just
happy to be inside the top 10 overall,” Monkhouse said. “We
had some intercooler problems, which slowed us. “And
some of the other local drivers were really fast this weekend –
it was just so competitive. “The
new suspension we were running this weekend is going to be very good
for sorting out the handling of the car. “We
are fairly confident that we’ll be back up around the top five.”
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