First off, I want to thank all the volunteers and organizers that made this rally possible, great job!

For us, Lanark was the first rally of the season, and what a great road to kick things off! It's such a tight and twisting challenge that really throws you into the deep end!

Getting back in the car having not run since Tall Pines in November is also a challenge. 5 months off meant I was a little worried we'd be slow and rusty! Stage one went relatively well, no major dramas other than John accidentally flipped two pages at once in the notes and we had to do a couple kms before we got back on. Thankfully that road is so tight, like Nick said elsewhere, if you just assume each corner is a 3 or 4 you'll be fine and not lose too much time. We finished the stage in 7:14, already over 15 seconds faster than our best time northbound last year. We were 12 seconds off the blistering pace of Chris Martin and 4s behind Nick and Kelly though. Unfortunately I don't have video of this stage, I had the exposure set wrong on the camera.

Stage 2 runs back southbound. With a rally like this that has lots of turnaround stages, one of the challenges is to turn on and off the aggression and to be able to get back into a quick pace after standing around chatting for a while with your fellow competitors. This second stage was again drama free, building our pace in the car once again. Southbound is always faster than north, and we managed a 7:01, 16 seconds faster than our best southbound time last year! Both Nick and Chris were in the 6:54-56 range and extending out their lead.

For this stage I tried a helmet camera view and honestly, I'd do that angle all the time from now on! I love it, it really gives a great sense of the speed of the stage and the work behind the wheel. I don't have the intercom audio on this video, but I think the engine noise provides a pretty nice soundtrack as it is!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWz62wvZvKY

Oh boy, now we're leaving service in the lead of the rally, a first for us. We wanted to be really careful at this point and not do anything stupid, but at the same time we didn't want to just give up the lead either! Stage 5 saw us run a 7:16, 4 seconds slower than Nick and Kelly who were charging hard now with a healthy car. They moved back up into 3rd, only 12 seconds behind us. Between us was the Vincents, who had lost a couple seconds to us, so we held a 5.5 second gap to second place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrXefqHDH1c

With two stages to go, 12 seconds to the Mathews and them clawing back time fast, we knew this was going to get interesting! As usual at the turnarounds there's lots of talk and bluster about strategy, but we knew for sure they'd be coming hard. It wasn't until we started the stage that I said to myself that it was time to go big or go home. In this first video you can actually see I've got quite the serious look on my face!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hHBPHNTSCdM

In addition to the new HD camera, for this stage I'm posting the feed from my old camera which still has the intercom fed into it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwbS2eGOFPY

At the finish of the stage we knew we'd set a fast time, and indeed we were just under that 7 minute mark. It wasn't until we'd talked to Nick and Kelly that we knew we'd managed to win the stage and put 2 seconds back on them. They were now only 3 seconds out of second place, and 15 seconds behind us!

The helmet cam has a bit of a "Blair Rally Project" feeling to it, but it actually gives a much better view of the road than the flatter angle of most cameras mounted on the cage.

Now if we can just get you stop shoving your head up behind the cage bars on left handers . . . .

Thanks for posting these so quick Ryan.

thanks for all the info was looking everywhere!