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Harry Bates and Coral Taylor have won Heat 2 of the Accent Benchtops Rally Queensland to claim a breakthrough event victory at Round 3 of the Bosch Motorsport Australia Rally Championship.
Following on from victory in Saturday’s Heat 1, the pair won five of the six Sunday stages and capped it off by taking out the EROAD Power Stage for additional points in their Toyota GR Yaris AP4.
“It’s been a long time; it’s been a tough year without a win, 13 months since Coral and I last won,” Bates said.
“It actually took a smart strategy from the start. It’s a tough rally, a real war of attrition out there and we saw so many people with issues, yesterday in particular. It was a total sprint between Lewis and I for the Heat win for much of the today, so to have both heat wins and my first Power Stage win in a while is cool.”
Following them home on Day 2 were Toyota Gazoo Racing Australia team-mates and championship leaders, Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin, who came out and won the first stage (Stage 9) on Sunday and then Stage 11 and were second on the others. They placed third for the round after their fourth in Heat 1.
“We were very happy to finish on the podium and extend our championship lead after yesterday’s power steering issues,” Bates said.
Second overall and splitting the brothers were Eddie Maguire and Zak Brakey, a reliable and successful debut in their new Skoda Fabia R5 with a second and third respectively over the two days.
After their third on Saturday, Bodie Reading and Mark Young backed up for seventh on Sunday and were fourth for the round, and first in the ARC Production Cup were Brodie Reading and Mark Young (Subaru Impreza WRX STi).
Next were Peter Rullo and Ben Searcy (Hyundai i20 N Rally2) ahead of Ryan Williams and Brad Jones (WRX) and Glenn Brinkman and Steve Richardson (Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution IX) – as the latter two teams made up the Production Cup podium. Ben Hayes and Cathy Hayes (Subaru BRZ) made it three wins from three rounds in the ARC 2WD Cup.
Nathan Quinn and Ray Winwood-Smith who were second in the points before Rally Queensland, were an early casualty, due to a drama on the way to first stage. Troy Dowel and Bernie Webb didn’t go much further with broken power steering in their new Mitsubishi Mirage G4.
The next and fourth round of the Bosch Motorsport Australia Rally Championship will be The Middle of Everywhere Gippsland Rally in Victoria on August 25-27.
