Paul Batten Racing Welcomes 2006

With the conclusion of the 2005 ARC season Paul Batten Racing (PBR) welcomes the 2006 season with open arms. After a challenging 2005 season PBR is looking to the future, were the team hopes to put into practice some of the hard lessons learnt.

After a very steep learning curve throughout the 2005 Season, PBR has begun the implementation of several new key structures along with new key figures, which will bring more consistency to the team.

The recent cost effective changes released by ARCom are beneficial in allowing the Team to make positive decision’s to compete in the 2006 Australian Rally Championship. Paul Batten Racing will compete in the 2nd Tier Privateer competition for 2006.

The events that Paul Batten Racing will contest during the 2006 ARC Super series are:

• Rally Of Canberra
• Coates Rally Queensland
• Toyota Rally South Australia
• NGK Rally of Melbourne

Potential extra events include:

• Telstra Rally Australia
• The Racetech Victorian Rally Championship

Team driver Paul Batten believes there were some areas that were lacking in the 2005 RS campaign, and hopes to address these issues in order to progress as a professional team in the future. “The key for me in 2006 is to spend as much time in the car as possible. During 2004 I competed in 12 events, and had a very successful year, but during 2005 I only competed in four, and had hardly any testing. This made it impossible to learn the new car, and it really shows in our results. Experience is really important in rallying, it makes a huge difference both in the speed, and in the consistency of any team. The plan in 2006 is to contest many more events particularly at State level which will definitely give me the time in the car I need.”

The car that Paul Batten Racing will use as their competition car will be a 2004 RS Impreza. It will be an up spec version of a Subaru RS Challenge car, which will allow the car to fit into the P5 category. The team is currently looking at what changes can be made to transform the standard RS Impreza into a competitive privateers cup car.

Craig Jones will join Paul Batten as co-driver for the 2006 ARC season. Jones has been involved in Rallying as a competitor for two years and gave several drivers personal best results in both state level and national competition during 2005. “It’s a great opportunity for me to join forces with a very young and talented driver. Paul was very fast out of the box at the beginning of 2005 and I look forward in continuing his rally career along side him”.

Brad Coghlan from Performance Group will also be joining the team and is performing major modifications in preparing the RS Impreza for competition in 2006. Performance Group Deals in car preparation in all forms of motor sport, including Roll cages, damage Repairs and Event Preparation.

PBR welcomes Japanese Wholesale Spares as exclusive supplier of Subaru related parts for the 2006 Season.

PBR welcomes all new team members and sponsors - Japanese Wholesale Spares and Performance Group for the 2006 Season.