Selected photos from the 2019 Adelaide Hills Rally, part of the Australian Rally Championship (ARC) and South Australian Rally Championship (SARC) run in the hills stretching from Clarendon to Mt Crawford and eastwards to Monarto plains area.  Two super special stages are run at The Bend rallysprint track which is not in the Adelaide Hills!  Heading the field would be Harry Bates and John McCarth, and Lewis Bates and Anthony McLoughlin in their Toyota Yaris AP4’s split by the modern Subaru WRX STi of Molly Taylor and Malcolm Read before the highest ranked South Australian Declan Dwyer and Craig Adams.  Then two more European cars, the Skoda Fabia of John O’Dowd and Toni Feaver, and Ford Fiesta of Luke Annear and Andy Sarandis before local Zayne Admiraal and Matthew Heywood.  Twelve of the SA entrants were also entered as ARC entrants.  With Dwyer only contesting a handful of events, at stake would be a good performance by Admiraal, able to take out the SA Rally Championship at this event.

Harry Bates would set the tone, winning the first 7 stages, building a sizable buffer, before brother Lewis Bates made some inroads taking stages 5, 6 and 7 to end up second by 28secs to his brother by Saturday’s last stage, with Molly Taylor in 3rd outright a minute behind Harry.  Local Declan Dwyer’s gearbox gave up in stage 5 leaving the local charge up to Zayne Admiraal who ended the day in 6th.

At Sunday’s end the times showed Harry Bates and Molly Taylor dead even, with Lewis having had a bad stage 11, 12 and 20 letting the others get away.  On combined times Harry won out.  Local driver Zayne Admiraal’s 5th outright on Saturday and 6th outright on Sunday saw him be the best SA driver and take out the SA Rally Championship.  Taking out best SARC 2WD was Damian Reed and Dale Neighbour, despite ‘stumping’ their Nissan Sylvia S13 in SS11 Mt Crawford, the first stage on Sunday.

 

SS1 Bugle Ranges 1

 

SS4 Clarendon 2

 

SS5 Back Callington 1

 

SS6 Monarto 1

 

SS8 Monarto 2

 

SS9 The Bend SSS1

 

SS11 Mt Crawford