Steerfast’s Craig Aggio and Megan Byrne have produced a stellar final run in the Brisbane Sporting Car Club’s Benarkin Stages event to take out the rally by just two seconds.
A strong field of 24 crews was entered in the club’s final competitive event for the year, which included 70 kilometres across two legs, as Aggio and Byrne secured the win on the event’s final stage.
Their victory came at the expense of two very experienced rally drivers with Game Over’s Tony Quinn and Ryan Williams finishing in second place, just four seconds ahead of Neill Woolley and Liam Hinschen in their inverted Motorsport 1999 Mitsubishi Magna.
Made up of three stages, the event's first leg saw crews get two runs at two shortened stages, before the stages were combined for the second leg, where crews had two passes.
Behind the wheel of a 2021 Toyota GR Yaris, Aggio and Byrne got off to a strong start, getting out to a 16-second lead at the conclusion of leg one, while just two seconds separated Quinn and Woolley.
During the first pass of the extended stage in leg two, a difficult run for Aggio saw him 20 seconds slower than both Quinn and Woolley, resulting in a drop to third ahead of the final stage.
Disappointment quickly turned to elation for Aggio though, as an almost perfect run through the event’s final stage saw him seven seconds faster than Quinn and Woolley, who had each gone 10 seconds slower than their previous stages.
The contrasting stage times resulted in Aggio and Byrne’s two-second victory over Quinn and Williams, while Woolley and Hinschen missing their second run of the event’s first stage proved costly as they were six seconds off the winners.
Wooley and Hinschen did get to enjoy some silverware though, taking out top honours in the FWD Class, while Quinn and Williams won the Invited Class in their 2020 Nissan Navara.
Aggio and Byrne also proved to be the fastest 4WD car for the event, beating the number one seed Marius Swart and Alan Stean by 17 seconds – the Inspirations Paint Capalaba 2007 VW Polo S2000 pilots ending the event in fourth overall.
It was a disappointing result for Swart, who only had a single run in both the leg one shortened stages, but victory in the rally’s final stage helped them overtake Huxton Motorsport’s Rod and Nick Reid on the standings to end the event on a high.
In sixth place was the fourth and final class winner, with David Byrne and Jake Keleher, taking out the RWD class in their 1973 Datsun 240Z.
View the full results via the Brisbane Sporting Car Club website.
