2024 MSS Safety Rally Barossa

The 2024 MSS Safety Rally Barossa was held on October 19 & 20, 2024 and incorporated stages extending from east of Angaston, south to Mt Pleasant area and the famous Goldfields stage (run in reverse) west of Williamstown. The rally had started with 3 nights stages on Saturday October 19. With late withdrawals from Dave McDonough and Darkie Barr-Smith that left 15 cars to battle it out. The main prize of the South Australian Rally Championship was still up for grabs.

Declan and Zoe Dwyer (Mitsubishi EVO VI) took a clean sweep of the 3 night stages beating Carwyn Harries/Darren Ambrose (Mitsubishi EVO VII) by 28secs, and Guy Tyler/Tania Wearing (Mitsubishi Magna) by 29secs, a handy lead going into Day 2. Darren Crozier/Crozier (Subaru WRX) was the best of the rest, 1min 17secs back.

Sunday would see Stone Jar repeated in daylight, Cromer, Eden High (the reverse of the famous High Eden stage) and Down Hill 1 (the Trial Hill stage run south to north). The Dwyers would beat out Tyler/Wearing on Stone Jar 2 and Cromer and then Harries/Ambrose on Eden High 1 to build on their Saturday’s 28sec lead at the top. Stage 6 suited Harries as he pulled out the best time to show the Day 1 results were no fluke. Battle of the Subarus meanwhile was being fought for 4^th between Crozier/Crozier and Brown/Brown, with the two teams trading fastest times between the 2 of them over the 4 stages. However a 15sec gap in arrears to the Browns on Eden High 1 didn’t do the Crozier’s any favours, no doubt brought about by a spin.

The second 4 stages of the day saw Tyler take the bit between his teeth pushing the big Mitsubishi Magna round the stages to claim 3 fastest times and haul in the Dwyers. The chase was maxe much easier with the Dwyers having brake issues on SS8 resulting in only the 8th fastest on the Goldfields Reverse 1 stage. Harries had the second fastest time ahead of the Brown/Brown combination in their Subaru Impreza WRX. With the brake issue sorted as best as it could, Dwyer did strike back on SS9 Downhill 1, about 6secs faster than Tyler. Dwyer would go on to record the 2nd fastest times on the two remaining stages, Downhill 2 and Goldfields Reverse 2. Harries soldiered on with diff issues but managed to record the two 3rd fastest stages for the last 2 stages…definitely a team to watch in the future when the car is fully fit! Brown/Brown would get the better of their Subaru opponents Crozier/Crozier, with 4th outright. Crozier’s consistently recorded 6th fastest stages times, mainly due to a couple of frustrated half spins on the same corner and was unable to keep up with the Browns. With a win needed to secure the South Australian Rally Championship, Declan and Zoe Dwyer could only rue the issues they had faced, coming agonisingly close to the big prize to miss out winning the event by 4secs after dominating for so many stages, and then to miss out by a mere one point from the championship. Congratulation got to Guy Tyler and Tania Wearing in their raucous Mitsubishi Magna for the rally win and the South Australian Rally Championship.

If you want to see how tight this contest became have a look at this (Stage number at the top, leaders at the end of each stage and their gap top second at the bottom, Dwyer’s leading by 28secs at the end of night stage 3)

Five Regularity competitors were entered in the event, competing in stages 4 to 11 (no night stages). Anthony Daily/Cameron van den Heuvel (2010 Subaru Impreza WRX) would amass the least penalty points of 71 points, edging out Stuart Bates and Mandy Rudham (Mitsubishi Pajero) by 3 penalty points (their total being 74). Third place was Matt and David Mercer (1992 Nissan Pulsar) with a distant 163 penalty points.

Please note below are only a small selection of the photos taken. Contact me via the website for details.

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