The 2026 Newstead Lodge Rally of Waitomo was one that we were genuinely looking forward to for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it’s our home rally hosted by the Hamilton Car Club. It’s also the second round of the North Island Rally Series (NIRS), and prior to the event we had made some changes to the Lancers engine mapping and also the suspension setup to see if we can convert power into grip.
Once again we were greeted by a fine, clear, cool morning and, once again, there was literally no wind to speak of! We arrived at the Service Park based out of Piopio College to set up camp for the day and it was immediately clear that there was a friendly, relaxed vibe amongst all of the competitors.
Being a Clubmans Rally there are a few subtle differences to a “normal” rally. There are no pacenotes for the crews to use, and you need to read the road and attack the stages “blind”. Additionally there is a maximum competitive stage distance of 80km.
We approached the start of the 14.45km SS1 not having tested the new engine tune so it was always going to be interesting to see what, if any, difference we would experience. Straight away it felt like a different car as we came out of the stage in tenth overall. More importantly, Tony was beaming that the car felt transformed!
SS2 was slightly shorter at 11.12km and once again we came through in tenth overall, but were now sitting ninth outright for the event out of the 41 competitors. So far the dust hadn’t been too much of an issue and we were hoping that would be the way it stayed for the rest of the rally!
SS3 was a repeat of last year’s SS2 and 4 and we were keen to get stuck into it! We got off to a great start and at the first spectator junction managed to execute the perfect “Scandinavian flick” which the crowd definitely enjoyed. The roads opened up and we were finally able to drive with the throttle wide open in 6th gear. Next thing… stock on the road! Sigh...... Having successfully negotiated that lot, we continued on and set the eleventh fastest time for the stage and now sat eight overall as we headed into the lunchtime service break.
SS4 and 5 were repeats of the mornings SS1 and 2. We were 8sec faster through SS4, and 13sec faster through SS5 as the loose gravel on the roads has been largely swept away. Things were all going very much to plan as we headed into the final stage of the day, SS6.
It was all going nicely as we headed down the hill to the spectator junction. Unbeknownst to us, a car before us had gone off at the spectator point, and despite being well off the road we were being flagged down by a spectator. We duly slowed as a precaution then realized that there was in fact no hazard at the junction.
As we accelerated out of the junction the Lancer had a half spin and we nudged a small bank on the inside of the corner, tipping the car to a point where we were either going to suffer a very slow rollover or we were somehow going to get away with it.
Fortunately it was the latter! After a quick turnaround we headed off content just to make the end. We knew that we had a good buffer back to Dave Strong & Rob Scott who were third in class so the move to consolidate our position was 100% the right thing to do.
We brought the EX Lancer home ninth overall for the rally, and more importantly second in Class D. In terms of our NIRS points, this moved Tony within 5 points of Strong in the Drivers points race, and Jayson was now tied with Rob Scott for first overall in the Co-Driver points race.
Next event for the team is a tarmac bent sprint in Ruapuke which the team will use as s shakedown for the SBT Taranaki Tarmac Rally on June 27. There's a bit to do between now and then so the team are hard at it. BRING IT ON!!
Photo credit "A Little Bit Sideways"
