Pedder ends decade long ARC drought
Scott Pedder, along with co-driver Glenn Macneall, have ended a decade-long drought in the Australian Rally Championship by taking a tight Rally Queensland.
Pedder set up his first ARC victory in 10 years with a super Saturday, winning every stage in Heat 1.
He carried on that momentum early on Sunday before a puncture in the day’s fourth stage opened the door for Harry Bates and Coral Taylor.
Although the reigning champion powered to a 14s win in Stage 2 and also the Power Stage, the Skoda was untouchable with Eddie Maguire and Zak Brakey a distant second.
Pedder admitted it was nice to end his long wait since the 2014 Rally Australia.
“It’s a lot of relief, to be honest and ten years in the making,” Pedder said.
“We knew we had the pace, we’ve just been unlucky for the first two event, but it came together over the last two days thanks to some luck we had with other competitors bombing out, but it feels fantastic.
“I started the year saying if you finished every heat and you’re relatively conservative you can win the Championship. ‘
“With the points system the way it is, you can’t afford to drop heats, and that’s the plan moving forward. You’ve just got to finish.”
Completing the all Skoda podium were Steve Maguire and Ben Searcy, while Bates and Taylor just fell short of the top five after failing to finish on Saturday.
“I’m really sorry to the team for my mistake yesterday. It’s pretty costly and obviously has put a dent in our championship aspirations, but just thankful to them that we’re able to repair it and come back fighting today,” Bates said.
“Today didn’t go perfectly either, but we’ve still salvaged a reasonable result out of it.
“It’s really tight now between Scott and I, so it’s exciting at the halfway point in the season, and I knew that it was going to come down to some pretty tight battles between he and I.
“I think today was probably the first day where we both actually had a reasonable enough run to be able to fight it out.
“I think we’re going to have plenty of them as the season progresses.”
The next ARC round is the Gippsland Rally on August 9-11.
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