A little bit sideways Rallying in New Zealand, where we like to get A Little Bit Sideways! Up to date Rally News from teams around the country together with event reports.
Tauranga’s Phil Campbell has made a consistent and solid start to the Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship, overcoming a huge week for the team in the build up to the DriveSouth Otago Rally to come home in fourth place.
Campbell suffered arguably the biggest accident of his career in the final round of the New Zealand Tarmac Hillclimb championship only five days before The Roofing Store Evo 9 was due at the event start in Dunedin, more than 25 hours drive away.
A huge effort from the team at Fraser St Panelbeaters and PF Automotive saw the car ready to go via a quick trip to sign shack. In the end, the car made the start and looked as good as new.
In dusty conditions, Campbell and co-driver Venita Fabbro took an understandably conservative approach, still enough to sit in sixth place at the first service, then moved into fourth on the following stage. A big battle ensued across the afternoon and in the end Campbell would round out a solid day in fifth.
Day two started with a slight handling problem that would be traced to a problem with the differential pump, but Campbell was still able to move his way into fourth place after the opening stage. It was a position he would hold onto for the remainder of the event.
“I’m certainly pretty happy to put a decent haul of points on the board considering the amount of work that all the team put in leading up to the event,” said Campbell. “Now we’ve got a solid base to work off and with a couple of rallysprints between now and Whangarei, we just need to find a little bit more pace to give the guys ahead of us a hard time.
The Campbell Rallysport team now turn their attention to Rally Whangarei on April 29-May 1.
Press Release by BB Media
