The Full-On Rallysport team are back in Australia after a very successful International Rally of Whangarei.

A strong performance at shakedown started the weekend off well, but also heralded the Whangarei tradition for wet rallies, with overnight rain watering the stages and downpours during the day making the event quite challenging.

The Alliance Airlines Evo 9 crew of Bruce Fullerton and Hugh Reardon-Smith had to cope with fog to start day 1, but by the halfway point of the rally had settled into 3rd place in the Pacific Cup. For the second day the team consolidated its position, pulling further ahead of their nearest competition.

“We entered Whangarei with the aim of a good finishing position but also a straight car, to be ready for the second round of the Pacific Cup in New Caledonia” said Bruce. “And this is what we achieved. We are very happy with the result, as we knew we couldn’t match the pace of Guarav Gill in the Skoda S2000 and Matt van Tuinen in his Subaru, so we drove sensibly to meet our own goals. There were plenty of places to make mistakes, as shown by the Japanese crew in their WRX, so we’re thrilled with our result.”

The team’s best stage place was 5th out of 14 starters in the Asia Pacific round, which was bolstered by some eligible entries from the New Zealand championship.

The Lancer, also supported by Fullerton Financial Services and Pirelli tyres, only needed standard servicing through the event, and the team are now looking forward to the New Caledonia event.