Crews braced for tricky test in Australia

Road position and the challenging 30-kilometre Plum Pudding test are among the early talking points as the World Rally Championship entourage began to assemble in Coffs Harbour for this week’s Rally Australia.

Drivers running at the head of the field, such as WRC title leader Sebastien Loeb who will go first on day one, are set to drop time forging a cleaner line for the drivers running behind, while the two passes of the Plum Pudding test, which will count as stages 22 and 25 on Sunday, are being tipped as ‘event-defining’.

“The cleaning on day one is not so bad but it’s worse on day two,” said Tom Fowler, Mikko Hirvonen’s rally engineer at Ford. “Although a lot of the gravel roads over here are used by the public they tend to be relatively clear in places. The trouble is the rally cars don’t take the same line as the every day traffic. In the corners where you’re taking a tighter line and running wider out of the exit there is a fair bit of gravel. I think road cleaning will be relatively high.”

Hirvonen and Ford team-mate Jari-Matti Latvala will start third and fourth on the road on day one, something that has cheered Fowler ahead of the New South Wales event. “It’s an ideal start with both our cars behind the Citroens,” said Fowler. “Hopefully that will play into our hands. Being a new event it levels things a lot when the roads are new and no one has got pace notes from previous years and memories of the stages. Certain drivers go better in those conditions than others. It brings more of a risk certainly.”

Of the Plum Pudding test, Fowler says drivers will have to trade some of their outright speed for a degree of caution.

“The stages on day one and day two are quite fast stages mainly on wider roads,” said Fowler. “But the 30-kilometre stage on Sunday will be quite a defining stage. It’s quite narrow and technical with some really tricky places. It’s still fast but the trees are really close to the road and it’s only one car wide. If everyone is still fighting at that time then it’s going to be a big push through there and there’s no margin for error. The surface will hold up well but there’s quite a lot of tree bark and leaves on the ground. It will be difficult.”