Gumball STi Racing

Our teams newest car the "Gumball X" is done!! This rally beast has been built as a full blown, open class, rally spec. racing machine, and has now sunk it's teeth into it's first gravel event.

For myself and co-driver Dean, we are very happy to have successfully finished our first ever gravel rally event.

As an international tarmac stage racing team, going gravel was a big step in broadening our teams experience, increasing the number events we compete in, and expanding our sponsors overall brand exposure.

The GCFR (Galway-Cavendish Forest Rally) event was a two pass recce format and the perfect debut learning event for us.

On the first practice pass we wrote our own notes and driving instructions, starting from scratch with a blank piece of paper and documenting what we saw on each stage using a series of short codes and building what is called a set of PACE notes. A second pass with a max speed limited to 60kph is then run which allows teams to refine their notes for each stage and try to describe the many many turns, features, and exposures (ie rocks/trees/swamps!!)

The rally main event was then started and we raced the stages using our handmade PACE notes. We decided to start out driving at a reasonable speed using the event to learn as much as possible. In the early stages we made a few rookie mistakes, then working together we were able to go faster and faster, in dusty conditions, and consistenly we were setting respectible top 10 stage times.

FourStar Motorsports prepped our car and our fantastic support crew chief (Ivano) who kept us in check, went through our car, and had some great advice that helped us stay out of the red mist and get through the event.

Many thanks go out to all our team supporters and sponsors who have helped us to get here, it was the first time we had ever had the car on gravel and we worked well together and finished ....great team result... overall good fun!!

Gumball STI Racing will be competing in select National level rally events...

Stay tuned.....