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Well Earned Clarion Service Park Award
After a busy lead-up to the Rally of Melbourne the partnership between Paul Batten Racing & the Motorsport School at the Kangan Batman TAFE was rewarded with the Clarion Service Park award. After a challenging year competing in the 2005 Subaru RS Challenge behind him team driver Paul Batten moved to Melbourne to take up a position as an engineer in the automotive industry.
This move meant Paul had to start from scratch with limited resources behind him. Fortunately a new partnership was formed with Melbourne based Co-Driver Craig Jones. A major boost came when the Motorsport Department at Kangan Batman TAFE came on board and agreed to help the team build the car that was on the water from Japan.
After landing the car in Australia a hectic build period ensued for the next couple of months. A shakedown was held for the car with a month before the Rally of Melbourne and several issues where highlighted, but the shakedown also highlighted that the TAFE students had done an excellent job on the car. The build-up culminated in the last few weeks leading up to the rally where electrical issues were posing major problems. As of Monday morning the event was in jeopardy as the car would not run, but thankfully the mysterious electrical problems were traced allowing the team at AVO to weave their magic with the Link ECU on the dyno.
The rally proper was Paul's first competitive drive of a turbo four wheel drive rally car and after the set-backs in the RS Challenge the team where looking for a consistent run. "I learnt some very hard lessons in last years ARC, I pushed too hard too early in a new car and new environment. I knew any mistakes in the new car would likely be the end of my career. The goal for the Rally of Melbourne was to have a steady run building up experience in the car, to concentrate totally on my own driving and not worry about what was going on around me. I'm confident the speed will come with more time in the car, but I need to let the speed come to me, rather than to push myself." said Paul. The conservative approach paid off for the team with 14th in Saturdays heat, and 10th outright in heat 2. Exhaust problems in Sundays first two stages saw the team drop some time, but some excellent work by the Kangan Batman TAFE service crew saw the problems rectified and the car working well in the remaining stages of the shortened event. "We were wrapped with Sundays top ten result, but even more pleased with the way we got that result. The car doesn't have a scratch on it, and we really improved as the event went on. The Clarion service park award is was a great reward for the huge amount of effort of that has gone on behind the scenes in the lead-up to the rally." said Co-driver Craig Jones. "As a privateer team we don’t have the most resources behind us running second hand tyres and doing things on the cheap, so we really appreciate the help of Link ECU, Japanese Wholesale Spares, AVO, www.RallyDrive.com.au, SBARU Spares, Hubble Photografix, Hyon Auto Spares, and Kangan Batman TAFE. We hope to compete in next years BP Ultimate Challenge in the NEC ARC, but as always finding the budget will be difficult”.
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© Paul Batten RacingAustralian Rally Championship |
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