MOTORSPORT: Rallying's uphill battle for attention

New Mazda shines in test but debut put off
The biggest races in Formula One and IndyCar -- the Monaco Grand Prix and the Indianapolis 500 -- are just a couple of days away. The longest race in NASCAR too, the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte, North Carolina, just hours after the Indy 500. It's also a big time in rallying, with perhaps the toughest round of the World Rally Championship, in Greece, and rounds of the Asia-Pacific and Australian championships on Queensland's Sunshine Coast.

The new Mazda 2 built by Rallyschool won't debut in Rally Queensland, despite some impressive testing in the hands of four-time Australian champion Simon Evans.

The Mazda's initial shakedown was followed yesterday by a full day's testing at Imbil, the timber town in the Mary Valley that is the hub for this weekend's forest stages, and Murray Coote, Mazda's last ARC champion in 1988, was blown away by its speed with Evans at the wheel. However, Evans has had to return to his Melbourne base to attend to projects of his family's concreting business, although the car will be demonstrated at Caloundra.

Rallyschool team principal Mick Ryan said he was "stoked" at the Mazda's speed "straight out of the box" but that postponing its debut until Rally South Australia at the end of July would allow for more fine tuning. That decision leaves Evans' younger brother Eli and his co-driver Glen Weston red-hot favourites for a third straight victory in the new G2 category of the ARC in their Italian-built Honda Jazz.

They have amassed 170 of a possible 172 points already this season, but rocky roads in the forests will make life difficult for all 100 vehicles competing in the various sections of the International Rally of Queensland.

"If you put a wheel off the side of the road there's a good chance you won't have that wheel anymore," Eli Evans said.

New ARC star Tom Wilde won the first two rounds of the four-wheel-drive category -- at Melbourne's Calder Park and in Western Australia -- in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X co-driven by Lee Tierney, but 24-year-old West Australian Wilde has never competed at the Queensland event -- although Tierney has the past two years.

The highlight on the Sunshine Coast is most likely to come from Queenslander Chris Atkinson, who is leading the Asia-Pacific championship, driving a Super 2000 Skoda Fabia for his new team, India's MRF.

Like Wilde's Mitsubishi, the Skodas of Atkinson and Indian driver Guarav Gill that have won the New Zealand and New Caledonia rounds of the Asia-Pacific series already this year have been built by Race Torque Engineering in Perth. Atkinson did not finish in Queensland the past two years when driving for the Malaysian factory-backed Proton team, although he won the event in 2004 -- before he started a four-year WRC stint with Subaru's factory team before it withdrew from the sport.

"Queensland is an event that you need to be really precise with your driving," Atkinson said. "The road conditions on the first two [Asia-Pacific] events this year were like chalk and cheese, but the Skoda was the fastest car on both of them, so that bodes well."

Swede Per-Gunnar Andersson, a two-time junior world rally champion who replaced Atkinson in the Proton team, has been exceptionally fast in the two rounds so far and has been frustrated not to finish better than second in NZ.

"I don't know this rally at all, but I don't think it can be as tough as New Caledonia," Andersson said. "Chris [Atkinson] is going to be hard to beat, but that's what we must do."

Proton's other driver, Perth-based Scotsman Alister McRae, edged Atkinson for the Asia-Pacific title last year but has been out of luck in his Super 2000 Satria-Neo this season.

Australia's rising star Brendan Reeves will compete in the WRC Academy round at the Acropolis Rally in southern Greece with his co-driver sister Rhianon Smyth, starting with a 25km night stage today. It is their 50th event together but it's sure to be a rough ride for the Victorian pair. Conditions on the Greek course are so rocky the Academy drivers in identical Ford Fiesta R2s will only contest five stages Friday morning and four Saturday morning, while the main WRC field will repeat those stages in the afternoons.

Ford's Finnish factory driver Jari-Matti Latvala returns after the broken collarbone from a skiing accident that forced him to miss Rally Argentina. Latvala is languishing sixth in the world championship, while his Norwegian former world champion teammate Petter Solberg is second, sandwiched between Citroen's French eight-time world champion and Ford's Finn, Mikko Hirvonen.

"It's the roughest round of the season ... there are many big rocks and that's what makes the rally so tricky," Solberg said. "The rough roads and the heat are hard for the tyres... You have to be smart with your driving in this type of event."

Loeb said that consistency over a loop of stages rather than being fastest on each stage was important on the Acropolis. "Tyre management can have a major impact on the outcome," he said.

Meanwhile, Kimi Raikkonen, who has returned to F1 this year after two seasons driving a Citroen in the WRC, wants to contest Rally Finland in August. Raikkonen said he had unfinished business in rallying, it's his home event, and there is a gap in the F1 calendar after the Hungarian Grand Prix.

The problem he faces is that his F1 team, Lotus, lost (when in its Renault guise) its then star, Polish driver Robert Kubica, in a rally accident before the start of last season. Raikkonen's best result in his WRC career was fifth place in Turkey in 2010, while his best in three outings in Finland has been ninth.

The next Australian Targa Championship will begin with a night stage at the Adelaide Showgrounds. A night stage there in the Rally SA gravel event some years ago drew a huge crowd but the action was curtailed because heavy rain made the oval track ridiculously slippery.

Organisers of what will be called the Intercontinental Night Stage on Wednesday, August 22, say it will allow up to 10 cars on course within the showgrounds at one time, ahead of four days of competition in the Adelaide Hills.

Although the new Mazda 2 won't compete at this weekend's Rally Queensland top local rally driver Ryan Smart will demonstrate it on the Caloundra Aerodrome super special stage on Saturday night. It also will be displayed at Friday night's ceremonial start at Caloundra's Kings Beach.

Simon Evans said he was "pretty devastated" not being able to give the car its competition debut after this week's testing. "The car is just fantastic -- quick, responsive and a ball to drive," Evans said. "Our times on the test stage at Imbil indicated it will be more than a match for the Hondas (of brother Eli and Mark Pedder).

"But having to delay the debut until Adelaide will give Mick [Ryan] and the [Rallyschool] boys more time to fine-tune the car even more and do more testing to see what, if anything, needs to change."

Ryan said: "The car is really brilliant, we are stoked at how good it is and how fast it was straight out of the box...But I know it will be better if we can test some more and have Simon totally focused on the job in Adelaide rather than worrying about work back at home this weekend.

"We were very pleased with the times it was achieving on the test stage. Simon did a recce (reconnaissance) run and then one quick sighting run before setting a time that was more than competitive with the opposition.

"We used the test to give our gearbox guys from Hollinger a run so that they can better understand the car and we will be pulling the box out and sending it to Hollinger so they can assess lifing of components etc and fine tune the box.

"Our suspension guru Murray Coote went for a ride with Simon and was blown away by the speed of the car, declaring we didn't need to time the stage -- that no one would drive around the loop quicker than Simon just had with him in the car.

"I know a lot of people were really keen to see the car in anger this weekend but Ryan Smart will show some of its potential when he drives it at Caloundra Aerodrome."

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