Eli Evans wins Rally Victoria

Eli Evans scored his 12th consecutive round win in the East Coast Bullbars Australian Rally Championship with victory at Rally Victoria outside Warragul.

Winning every single round of two years of competition in the national series also brought Honda back-to-back manufacturer titles, as the Japanese car maker withdraws from the championship.

“I’m speechless,” said Evans.

“I’m very proud of everything today, everything this weekend and everything this year. I’m so thankful to the Evans Motorsport team and Honda Australia.

“Twelve wins in a row now, so hopefully we can get something together for next year and come out to try to extend that to 13.”

Brendan Reeves, in the rallyschool.com.au Mazda2, pressured Evans all weekend. Reeves was within striking distance heading into this afternoon’s closing forest stages but struck a rear puncture with eight kilometres to run on Limberlost stage.

“Disappointing to get the flat, but overall a really great weekend for the team. The Mazda has been great from the very start and it’s nice to have a consistent end to the year and finish the season on a high,” Reeves said.

Third place for the day went down to the absolute wire with Glen Raymond holding the smallest of leads heading into the final 2.3km Lardner Park stage over Renault’s Tom Wilde.

While Raymond started the stage with a 0.6 second lead he would be out gunned by the front-wheel drive Renault of Wilde who leapt ahead and finished the Heat in third 4.8 seconds up.

“It’s been touch and go all day,” said Wilde.

“We’ve been losing power all weekend, but it’s been particularly bad today. We thought it was electrical, the team haven’t been able to find the problem, and all day today the car has been going through oil, so we’ve got a big problem there somewhere.

“Incredible to make it to the end, we’ve been driving cautiously and that’s not the way to drive these cars. Huge thanks to the Race Torque team for this year, we’ve made it to the end with no DNF’s at all.”

The result this weekend pushes Wilde ahead of his Renault team mate Scott Pedder to claim second outright in the Championship behind Evans.

Massive disappointment for both Pedder brothers, with Mark Pedder stopping his Honda with a broken throttle cable, while for the second day running Scott Pedder found himself stranded on the roadside with a broken control arm after clipping a rock.

In the 4WD National series John Mitchell continued his fine form to claim the day ahead of a hard-charging Ritchie Dalton, the Irishman securing enough points against his primary challengers Mike Bailey and Mick Harding to take second in the points.

The Classics produced some of the best action of the weekend with ARC returnee Ben Barker providing plenty of spectacular sideways action in his BMW 320is, until his gearbox expired, allowing Neal Bates to comfortably lead home the field.

In the Side-by-Side Challenge after disappointment yesterday, Michael Guest blasted out of the blocks to show arch rival Cody Crocker a clean pair of heels.

Next year’s East Coast Bullbars Australian Rally Championship will start with the National Capital Rally in Canberra on the weekend of 28th February to 2nd March.

RESULTS: LEG 2 -Rally Victoria

VIDEO: Wrap-up of Rally Victoria