Fifth-place finish and solid points for Gilmour at Otago Rally

An Otago Rally victory will need to wait until another year for Dunedin’s Emma Gilmour, although she logged some solid points in the opening round of the Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship (NZRC), finishing fifth today.

Her final result perhaps did not reflect the fact that Emma and Australian co-driver Ben Searcy were regularly among the top five finishers over the 280-kilometre, 15-stage, two-day rally and clocked up four third-fastest times. A puncture late in the 34-kilometre opening stage meant Emma and Ben elected to keep driving out, rather than stopping to change the tyre, to keep the time lost to a minimum.

Then on Sunday a brake issue slowed the Vantage Window & Doors Citroen C3 rally car on Special Stage 13.

“Thirteen out of fifteen stages were great. I learned so much about the car and had some really good seat time. Ben slotted into the co-driver’s seat well and I enjoyed working with him again,” Emma says.

“It was a positive weekend and I know that we had the pace to be able to mix it at the front. It was a hot pace and a really competitive top six drivers, which made for some good battles.”

“Ollie and the Paddon Rallysport team did a great job on the C3 and I’m still very happy to bag some solid points for the start of the championship season,” Emma says.

The NZRC action will resume at the South Canterbury Rally on May 10, based in Timaru, before a return to the Canterbury Rally in Christchurch on June 1.

Following a mid-season break, teams will move to the North Island with another returning event, Rally Coromandel, to be held on August 23 from the seaside town of Whitianga. The series then moves to the Tauranga-based Rally Bay of Plenty on October 11, before the second two-day round of the season, the International Rally of Whangarei, to round out the season on November 7-9.

Emma Gilmour thanks the following sponsors for their support: Vantage Windows & Doors, Gilmour Motors Suzuki, Dura-Seal, Dayle ITM, MITO, Suzuki New Zealand, Castrol NZ, Sparco, Allport Motorsports, Custom Signs, NGK, Webdesign, Pure Sports Nutrition and Body Synergy Gym.