“The car ran faultlessly”, a jubilant Stewart Reid exclaimed after finishing on top of this year’s classic score sheet in the first round of the ARC last weekend.
Reid, who runs SR Automotive in Kippa Ring a suburb of Brisbane, is “living the dream” of driving one of rallying’s most iconic rally cars.
Reid’s RS1800 is the same specification as the RS 1800 of WRC World Champion Mikko Hirvonen and is built by leading specialists, Historic Rallysport in the UK.
The QUIT Forest rally was Reid and co driver Iain Stewarts first run on a gravel event in the teams brand new Escort RS 1800, it’s only other outing in the tarmac Rally Tasmania in February where Reid placed in the top five.
“I had not had any real chance to test the car on gravel” Reid said after missing a test session. “The first two stages were scary, I was wondering where the centre and front diffs were!
Last time I competed here was in a Toyota Corolla Group N (P) car – they just turn and go!
Whilst Reid was never headed during the event, he enjoyed the chase by fellow Classic drivers Barry Lowe in his Autosport SA Commodore and Dave Thompson in the thundering Falcon XY GT.
The Classics proved popular in the rally with many people looking at the cars at the end of the Busselton Super special stage and at service. Reid fitted tarmac tyres for the Super special – running on old rally tyres not an option, as he didn’t have any.
All the Classic crews are part of the ever-growing Classic rally movement in Australia. ACRA ran a successful ARC Classic competition in 2010 and members thrilled thousands of spectators at ARC events. The next event is the International Rally of Queensland where the cream of Australian classic cars will be there to thrill the thousands of spectators expected.