Team MRF have had the perfect start to their 2012 Asia-Pacific Rally Championship campaign, with team drivers Chris Atkinson and Gaurav Gill finishing first and third in the International Rally of Whangarei in New Zealand.
Driving a Race Torque prepared Skoda Fabia Super 2000, Atkinson and his co-driver, Stephane Prevot, dominated the rally, leading from the second stage and taking a convincing 28.1 second win over Sweden’s Per-Gunnar Andersson.
It was Atkinson’s second consecutive victory in the event, and comes on his, and the team’s, debut with the super fast Skoda Fabia.
“It's fantastic. The whole MRF Team and the Race Torque boys have been amazing all weekend and I can’t thank the team enough,” Atkinson said.
“The car has been faultless, and the tyres have worked really well, and apart from one mistake from me on the last group of stages, it's been the perfect weekend.
“It’s a great start to the championship and an awesome effort by the MRF Skoda team, considering this is a new venture for all of us driving and running the Fabia S2000.
“It was always going to be tough being up against the factory Proton team. The MRF team came along with a brand new car and straight out of the box we were on the pace and were able to control the rally, which is great.
“I was just driving to beat PG – that is all I was worried about, and the APRC points, and while we could have gone a bit faster in places, we were trying to judge our speed and not try doing anything we didn’t have to.
“It was hard going running first on the road on day two, which lost us some time sweeping the loose gravel off the hard surface, but there’s no better way to start a championship than with a win and we’ll be looking to roll this form into round two in New Caledonia in a few weeks time.”
The second MRF Skoda of Indian, Gaurav Gill, secured the final podium spot on the podium, edging out reigning APRC title holder, Alister McRae, who struggled to keep up with the pace of the two Skodas in his Proton Satria S2000.
Based out of Whangarei, to the north of Auckland, the rally consisted of 16 competitive stages over two days.
This year the APRC has adopted the “power stage” formula from the WRC into its points system, offering bonus points to the top-three fastest times over the final stage of the rally.
Gill and Australian co-driver, Glenn Macneall, were second on the stage, claiming an additional two points, with Atkinson claiming the final bonus point with the third best time.
Team MRF’s Anthony Rodricks was full of praise for the team, and of Race Torque.
“The victory was significant as MRF has never won an APRC rally in New Zealand before. What is more remarkable was for Race Torque to put together the entire package in a short period of time.
“We did just one day's testing, with a strange car, the Skoda Fabia S2000 — even our technical team worked tirelessly to develop tyres that would adapt to the modified S2000 cars.
“Gill's performance was exceptional, as unlike Atkinson, who drove the Proton S2000s before, he had no S2000 experience at all.”
Round two of the APRC takes crews to the French colonised Pacific island of New Caledonia for Rallye de Nouvelle Caledonia from April 28-29.
Final results, 2012 Rally of Whangarei
Chris Atkinson / Stephane Prevot, Skoda Fabia S2000, 2h50m16.1s
PG Andersson / Emil Axelsson, Proton Satria Neo S2000, +28.1s
Gaurav Gill / Glenn Macneall, Skoda Fabia S2000, +2m35.8s
Alister McRae / Bill Hayes, Proton Satria Neo S2000, +3m37.6s
Brian Green / Fleur Pedersen, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo X +14m19.0s
FIA Asia Pacific Rally Championship – provisional points
Chris Atkinson, Australia, 25
Per-Gunnar Andersson, Sweden, 18
Gaurav Gill, India, 15
Alister McRae, Scotland, 12
Brian Green, New Zealand, 10






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