FIVE INDUCTED INTO THE AUSTRALIAN RALLYING HALL OF FAME

Five inducted into the Australian Rallying Hall of Fame

At the fifth Australian Rally Hall of Fame Ceremony, five key contributors to the discipline were honoured in Ballarat last night as a precursor to this weekend’s Eureka Rush Australian Rally Championship round.

Scott Pedder, Wayne Bell, Barry Habgood, Garry Searle and Ivar Stranelis joined the likes of Harry Firth, Colin Bond, Ross Dunkerton and Fred Gocentas in the Hall of Fame, which aims to honour key contributors to the sport of rallying in this country.

Pedder started competing in Autocross, but soon progressed to the Victorian Rally Championship in 1999, winning it the next year before making the step up to the ARC in 2001 with the family Pedders Suspension team.

The Victorian competed with the factory Mitsubishi Ralliart and Renault squads culminating in the 2014 crown. These campaigns were split by a number of Asia Pacific and European events, a best finish being fourth in WRC2 at Rally Finland 2015.

He also was ARC CEO during the sport’s introduction of two-wheel drive regulations as its top-class among other initiatives.

Hyundai and Wayne Bell are a synonymous partnership, but he started his career in a financed Mitsubishi Galant, which he campaigned for four seasons before being picked up by the Holden Dealer Team.

He was part of the Repco Round Australia HDT 1-2-3, but is best known for his partnership with Hyundai, which took him to the world stage and kick started the Korean manufacturer’s association with the dirt.

Not only has Bell had a long association with Hyundai, but he and co-driver Dave Boddy had a 20-year team partnership, the second longest in rallying history.

He has been nationally and internationally lauded as a scrutineer, Habgood has been Chief Scrutineer of ARC events since the early 1980s, which led to the role at Rally Australia in the early-1990s. He has not missed an event since.

In 1995, Habgood was appointed CAMS ARC Technical Delegate, a position he still holds.

Searle is a man that changed the way results were gathered in rallying, creating software with good friend Alex Ross, which was used at the Canberra International Rally. Later, he scored the 1995 Mobil 1 Trial, 1998 Playstation Round Australia and that year’s Targa Tasmania.

His work particularly at Targa Tasmania revolutionised the results system for the event and has since been utilised at a variety of tarmac events Australia-wide.

A big contributor to South Australian rallying, Stanelis ran the South Australian round of the ARC for 18-straight years, was a course co-ordinator for the 1979 Repco Round Australia Trial, creator of the 1986 State Bank Discovery Trial and a technical advisor for the 1977 Singapore Airlines London to Sydney Marathon.

These five newest inductees were joined by three Victorian Hall of Fame recipients as drivers Ian Richards and Graeme Wise, as was navigator Noel Kelly were honoured on the night.

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