The Coomealla Memorial Club and Bendigo Bank Pooncarie Desert Dash takes place this week and for a lot of the nation’s best drivers, it will be their first time at the event.
 
Ahead of the BFGoodrich Motorsport Australia Off Road Championship’s season round, see what some of the competitors are saying about the championship’s newest event.
 
Greg Gartner
I don’t know a lot about it. It’s not far from home for us. All reports its fantastic track. We did race there for about 10 years, but I think it’s a different station. With that said, the terrain will be spot on there to be honest.
 
Brett Comiskey
I have never been to Pooncarie and we missed out last year due to COVID. A few of the drivers have let me in on a few of the secrets and apparently, it’s a bit dusty, which will be interesting. However, it’s off road - you either like it or you hate it.
 
Ryan Taylor
We haven’t heard much about Pooncarie, so we will be going into it pretty blind. We’ll see how we go. It will be completely new for us.  
 
Jake Swinglehurst
We don’t know too much about it, but we know it’s dusty. We wanted to go to an event that was held there last year but couldn’t, so we’re going into a bit of the unknown. We’re like a lot of people, so it’s going to be good.
 
Greg Campbell
We ran there quite a few years back. From memory, it’s reasonably quick, but the ground was a bit soft. The ground broke up a bit because of the rain. Not sure whether it will hold together. It was a good fun track and I enjoyed it. The event will be good but it will be tough.
 
Shannon Rentsch
We raced there once a long time ago. We have always liked it up there in Mildura. It’s very open and should be a good track and we look forward to it.
 
Mat Huxley
One of the most important things of the round will definitely be reconnaissance because there will be a lot of crews in a similar boat to us, where it will be the first proper look at the track, so we’ll be making sure we are taking everything in.