The Sunraysia Safari Rally is quickly turning into a ‘two-horse race’, with just under 4 seconds separating Rob Herridge’s Maximum Motorsport Subaru Forester and four-time Australasian Safari winner Steve Riley.
“It’s a bit of a ‘David and Goliath’ battle”, commented Rob Herridge at the end of the day. “We were first car on road, and with that you can’t see where other competitors have made mistakes. So we were taking care with our navigation, and we had to back off in some of the rougher stuff.”
Todays four stages took crews north past Wentworth for two morning tests of just under 70kms each, followed in the afternoon by the massive 136km Wyoming stage, run to the north of the Mungo National Park, before crews turned south towards Mildura for the 67km Tapio Grid stage.
During the ‘short’ morning stages Rob and co-driver Sam Hill managed to maintain their overall lead.
“Navigation is extremely difficult. We’ve not seen the stages before, the roads are overgrown so it’s often quite hard to see where they go and there are lots of little tracks running off the actual stages. Sam is doing a great job navigating and keeping us on course. In some places you drive kilometers between calls. So the co-drivers really have to be on their game otherwise you can take a wrong turn and go three or four kilometers before you realise it.”
The 136km stage was dry and dusty, and better suited to the larger cars and trucks. Riley managed to take the lead, completing the stage two and half minutes faster than Rob. But the Maximum Motorsport Subaru Forester fought back during the final test of the day, taking the stage win and reducing Riley’s lead down to 3.7secs.
“Steve Riley caught us on the long stage, and then we had to back off as we were driving in his dust. But he had a flat tyre towards end of stage, so we made up some time. And we finished right on his tail at the end of the final stage. The course has been a mixture on really rough, craggy tracks and really good rally roads. We’ve had genuine pace where conditions suited the car. We’ve given the Forester a real beating, but we’ve had no mechanical issues today.”
Day 3 of the Sunraysia Safari starts with three monster stages of over 100kms each, run around Mulurulu Lake, finishing with a ‘short’ 46km blast to the south of Pooncarie.
“It’s the longest day of the rally tomorrow. I think there are 400kms of competitive stages plus 300kms of transport stages! It’s likely to be dry and dusty again up north, so it may be better suited to the larger trucks.”
“I’m actually pretty happy to be second car on the road tomorrow. Steve Riley has to go first, so we get to see where he makes any mistakes. It will be a big day tomorrow. We’ll try and keep the pressure on Riley and try to stop him increasing lead.”
Sunraysia Safari Rally – Unofficial Day 2 Results
1. Steve Riley, 5hrs 54m 19.098s
2. Rob Herridge, +0m 3.778s
3. John Purshouse, +10m 37.395s
4. John Hederics, +12m 13.231s
5. Luke Olholm, +14m 19.789s