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