Kevin Raedal and Lisi Phillips have pulled off a brilliant comeback in the 2018 BOTT Adelaide Hills Rally to win their first ARC 2WD Championship round for the year.
The Ford Falcon XR6 pilots worked extremely hard throughout the three-day event, ending heat one in second place behind first year rally driver Haowen Chu and co-driver Glenn Alcorn, before consistency throughout heat two saw them claim the round win.
Heat two ended up being a day of heartbreak for Chu who had fought his way to the front of the field on Saturday, only to sustain issues to his Ford Fiesta’s rear shocks, missing four of the remaining seven stages.
Chu wasn’t the only one to have problems in the second heat with the eventual third placed Damian Reed and Guy Tyler also missing the majority of Sunday’s heat suffering issues in their Nissan Silvia S13.
Despite both suffering issues throughout the day, Chu and Reed were still able to grab second and third in the class respectively, with Raedel being rewarded for pushing through the 17-stage event without any hiccups.
Unfortunately, for fellow CAMS Australian Rally Championship regulars Adam Kaplan and Alisha Penney, their good work in the opening stages was undone when they crashed out of the South Australian rally towards the end of heat one.
Leading the pack for the whole first heat, the pair ended up rolling their Nissan 350z on the final stage to put an end to the weekend. While the crew were unharmed, they picked up no points and were unable to take part on Sunday.
Although unable to record points in South Australia, Kaplan still holds a 16 point lead over Chu on top of the 2WD Championship standings, with both ARC regulars not missing a round throughout the season.
The CAMS Australian Rally Championship’s final round takes places in the Coffs Coast on 14 – 16 November.
