Queensland Rally Championship becomes alive

As the dust settles over the Nanango and Manumbar region, the Kickass Motorsport Australia Queensland Rally Championship kicked off in style for 2024. 

A total of 30 competitors took on 120 competitive kilometres, and at the end if it all Dakar Rally competitor Glenn Brinkman emerged victorious.

Brinkman’s time of 1:10:47 was a minute and a half clear of Ian Menzies/Robert McGowan in a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9 1-2.

A total of 20 crews made the finish of the eight-stage rally with 10 finding trouble – most for mechanical reasons – along the way including reigning champions Ryan Williams and Brad Jones.

Pleasant conditions greeted competitors but a stage was lost at the first course check, as the roads had substantially worsened since the road book was first written.

But ultimately this led to a better option – the use of the aptly-named Paradise stage.

Competitors started appearing at Nanango Showgrounds early on Saturday and crews got out the gate on time for their first lap of Paradise. 

Menzies/McGowan set an early cracking pace of 12m04s for the 18.69km stage, with Williams/Ryan Jones hot on their heels 5s off.

Not far behind them was Erik Johnsson/Larisa Biggar, with a mere three seconds separating first to third.

Running Paradise three times gave the more experienced crews plenty of opportunity to ‘learn’ the stage, and that was reflected in the improvement in stage times over the subsequent two runs. 

Overall, there was consistent and improving times on the subsequent runs across the field, meaning that by the end of Heat 1, the overall gap between the first four cars was less than a minute, over 56.07 kilometres of competitive distance, while second to third place was separated by only four seconds.

Next was an all-time favourite piece of shire road in the form of Western Branch Road. This 13.34

kilometre stretch of road saw the top tier competitors averaging speeds just above 110km/hr, with the fastest nine competitors finishing the stage in under eight minutes. 

Fastest by 15s was Williams, who was on the pace, but would be forced to withdraw just two stages later.

From there, competitors went over to complete two laps of roads in the Elgin Vale and Gallangowan state forests, ultimately finishing in the late afternoon at Manumbar Campdraft.

This is where Brinkman/Hughes made their move, winning the final two stages to power on to glory.

The second round of the Queensland Rally Championship is at Coffs Harbour on April 20.

Image by ZED Photography

Queensland Rally Championship round 1 results

There’s lots more loaded into a bumper edition of AUTO ACTION magazine, on sale at newsagents and available digitally here.

For more of the latest motorsport news, subscribe to AUTO ACTION magazine.