Simon and Elysia Jansen will be looking to continue an impressive run of form at the Accent Benchtops Rally Queensland field when the married couple returns to the Bosch Motorsport Australia Rally Championship field in July.
The husband and wife will return to their local ARC round for the second time in three years next month after an 18th place outright finish at the event back in 2021.
Since then, the pair have been riding the momentum to improve their outright position in each rally appearance, which includes a 15th place in last year’s Netier National Capital Rally and an outright fourth outright in the KickAss Motorsport Australia Queensland Rally Championship’s Roo Systems Manumbar Rally.
Despite not competing on a regular basis in the last two years, the Jansens have no shortage of experience when it comes to competing on the national stage, and especially in Queensland.
With their record tracking back to the days of Caloundra in 2003, they competed in Queensland’s premier rally event for fr consecutive years before taking a hiatus from the sport at the end of 2006.
“We have always loved Rally Queensland, we have been doing it for many years now and it has always been nice to get away from the Tasmanian winter,” Simon said.
“There are some great people involved and it is just a brilliant event overall. It made us want to keep coming back.
“We had a really good result last time out, it was a good clean event with no mistakes and we are now looking at Rally Queensland to see what we can do with the championship and get a result.”
During their time away from rally, Simon and Elysia made the decision to move away from the cold winters of Tasmania, and into sunny Queensland where they began building rally cars for a Toyota dealership.
It was around this time when Elysia decided she wanted to get back into the sport, which precipitated the build of the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VI they have been running since their return in 2020.
While the car has delivered some brilliant results in the last four years, Simon knows there is still plenty of work to do to get it to where they want it to be.
“We have been running in the Evo VI for about four years now, it’s been good to us, but the Evo III was always my favourite,” Simon explained.
“I am doing my best to get this one to where we want to be, that feeling you get when you put on an old pair of shoes you used to love, that’s where we are trying to get.”
“In this sport you are always learning, you are always trying to sharpen the pencil and try different things. I don’t think it ever stops, and it would become boring if that were to ever happen.”
Not only did the move to Queensland allow for some warmer Australian winters, but it also opened the door for further participation in events with the difficult Tasmanian logistics becoming less of a factor.
“It was always a struggle to get out to events as we couldn’t get the truck around when we were in Tasmania,” Simon added.
“But now we are trying to do as much as we can. It has been tough since Covid but at least now we are able to play it as we see it.
“A return to Canberra could be on the table or even South Australia later in the year. We would also love to do Tassie again but that’s where it gets a bit hard.”
“For now, our focus is on Queensland – we have our service crew flying up from Tasmania and they are looking forward to getting out of the cold winter and into the Gympie sun.”
The Accent Benchtops Rally Queensland event will act as the third round of the Bosch Motorsport Australia Rally Championship and will take place in Gympie on 22-23 July.
