Brendan Reeves heads into this weekend's Lightforce Rally SA, round 4 of the Kumho Tyre Australian Rally Championship (ARC), aiming for a hat-trick of wins.
Reeves and co-driving sister, Rhianon Gelsomino, have won two rallies from two starts this year and are aiming to make it three on the trot.
Three weeks ago the pair won the final round of the New Zealand Rally Championship in a Mazda 2 but this weekend they'll compete in Reeves' Subaru WRX which took them to victory at the National Capital Rally in Canberra (ARC round 2) back in May.
Whilst the car has had no set-up changes since Canberra, the team at Bendigo Tyre Centre have spent considerable time fine tuning the Subaru ahead of this weekend.
Reeves and Gelsomino last contested Rally South Australia in 2014 and are expecting a number of changes to the event this year. They'll spend Wednesday and Thursday of this week doing their reconnaissance of the rally and re-writing their pace notes as the last time they entered the event they were in a front wheel drive car.
With rain forecast for Thursday, Reeves is confident that his starting position as second car on the road (behind Simon Evans) will give him an advantage. If the rain comes to fruition, dust should not be an issue for any of the drivers but Reeves (and Evans) will have the advantage of running on smoother roads.
Lightforce Rally SA will run over both Saturday and Sunday (September 10 and 11) and consists of 20 stages in the Mt Crawford area totalling around 220 kilometres of competitive rallying. Stage distances are shorter than in previous years with the shortest stage 5.27 kilometres and the longest just over 20 kilometres in length. Reeves is especially looking forward to the three night stages that will be run on Saturday night.
"I'm looking forward to competing in South Australia again," Reeves said. "We had a really good battle with Simon (Evans) and Harry (Bates) at our only other ARC outing this year, so it will be great to take them on again this weekend."
Lightforce Rally SA kicks off at 9am on Saturday from Mount Pleasant Talunga Park.
Photo Credit: John Doutch