Craig Rando and Scott Beckwith have won the opening round of the Motorsport Australia WA Rally Championship after a strong performance in the back half of the event.
 
With almost 40 crews entered in the event, Rando steered his Subaru GD STI to a 39 second win over Ben Searcy and Daymon Nicoli, winning four of the 10 stages.
 
For much of the event, Rando and Beckwith sat in second place behind Max McRae and Mac Kierans until SS7, when the teenager had to retire due to a transition problem.
 
It was a bitter pill to swallow for McRae, who had up until that point, dominated the event with five of six stage wins and had built a healthy 30 second lead over Rando.


Photo: DirtFish Media 

“Coming out of a slow corner in stage seven, I got back on the throttle and there was a big knocking noise,” McRae said.
 
“Basically, we lost all drive – so I looked to pull over as quickly as possible to avoid doing any more damage.
 
“The pace is the real positive here. We were winning stages by a good margin, and everything felt like it had taken a real step forward from last year.

“The pace notes I’m working on with my co-driver Mac have improved tremendously and everything just feels like it’s really working now. 
 
“Of course, it’s disappointing not to take the win, but that’s just the way it is. We’re doing the full WA Championship this year and it would have been great to put some really good points down on the opening event – that’ll just have to wait for round two.”
 
With Rando finishing second place in all but one of McRae’s wins, he had already created a comfortable lead of his own over Searcy, who could only finish second twice for the day.

Winning three consecutive stages after McRae’s withdrawal, Rando extended his new lead to 38.2 seconds over the Mitsubishi Evo of Searcy – eventually locking in the win with a second place on the final stage.
 
Claiming that final stage of the day was Jack Flanagan and Murray Hynes with the duo further cementing their position on the podium ahead of rookie Daniel Gonzalez and Calab Ash, who were behind the wheel of John O’Dowd’s state-championship winning Skoda Fabia R5.


Taking out top honours in the Motorsport Australia WA 2WD Rally Championship was Glenn Alcorn and Jonathan Charlesson in a Ford Escort RS - comfortably beating Simon Gratton and Richard Harris by more than a minute.
 
Click here to view full results.
 
The next round of the 2022 Motorsport Australia WA Rally Championship season will be the Make Smoking History Forest Rally, which is also the second round of the RSEA Safety Motorsport Australia Rally Championship on 20-22 May.