Written by Fabien Kornél
Fresh from their success at the Pirelli Star Driver Shootout in Spain two weeks ago, Brendan Reeves and Rhianon Smyth returned to tarmac rallying at the weekend. Driving a Mazda3 MPS for Mazda Motorsport in the inaugural Targa High Country rally, the brother-sister duo showed impressive speed and talent.
Day one of the rally on Saturday consisted of eight stages with the day starting and finishing at Mount Buller. Four stages were run in the morning before a lunch break at Wangaratta, with crews then repeating three of the morning stages on the return leg. The day's final stage was an ascent up the Mount Buller road and, after a superb run throughout the day, Reeves and Smyth ended the day with a lead in the Showroom Class of over three and a half minutes, and sixth place outright. With the rally's outright leaders driving much more powerful machinery in the form of Lamborghinis and Porsches, it was a remarkable effort to have the nimble Mazda3 MPS inside the top ten, let alone in sixth place.
Reeves and Smyth went into Sunday ready for another challenging day of technical high country roads! By the end of stage 10, they held a lead of over four minutes in the Showroom class.
In stage 11, the longest stage of the event at 28km, the pair were having a good run through the twisty downhill section, 26km into the stage, when their good run came to an end. After a fast straight into a sharp right corner, Reeves had some initial brake fade, which led to him having too fast an entry into the corner and with no other option but to run up the bank or hit another car already crashed, Reeves ran off the road.
"It's extremely disappointing as we were having such a great event and the Mazda was going beautifully," said Reeves. "We are really looking forward to getting back in the car again and working with Mazda."
Neither Reeves nor Smyth were injured in the incident.
Reeves and Smyth will now prepare for the final round of the Australian Rally Championship (ARC), Rally Victoria, which takes place around Warragul this weekend, November 13 and 14. The all new ARC event will be run by the Cerberus Car Club, of which they are both members. To support their club in the event, the pair will drive a Subaru from Rallyschool as '0' car on the gravel event.
Source: http://www.rallybuzz.com