Rally of Wales

The Rally of Wales takes the scholarship drivers on two events: the Panaround Rally on Saturday and The Gwynedd Rally on the Sunday. They'll also get the opportunity to compete with Gwyndaf Evans when he joins them to drive the same specification ZR. Matt had this to say before the rally:

“Competing with Gwyndaf will give us a good benchmark for what a world class driver can do in these cars. Nobody expects us to be anywhere near his pace but it will be interesting to see what sort of a result he can get on stages which are virtually in his own back yard,” says Beebe.

“Stages being used this weekend include world famous classic Welsh Forest stages. These stages such as Sweet Lamb and Dyfi, were previously used on the Wales Rally GB and together with Kielder, used to account for most of the retirements on the old school RAC Rally.

"The stages are more technical than on the previous rounds with one corner leading straight into the next without long straights to catch your breath, so we have been warned to take extra care and especially listen to our pace notes. I have been a spectator on some of these stages but I am sure they will look totally different as we drive through at speed.

“Richard and I are very comfortable with each other inside the car and have started to build up a good understanding of our relative strengths and weaknesses. We are confident in the cars ability and know that there is still a lot more performance to be extracted both from the car and from ourselves. In fast sections the car handles so well that I can keep the throttle flat to the floor but we are still being cautious in the tighter sections of the stages and are not really getting the car sliding around to our advantage to allow us to carry more speed through the corners. However we should develop these rally techniques as we gain further experience in the MG. We also face the new challenge of concentrating throughout two full days of competition”

“The MG ZR is strong enough to handle two rallies on consecutive days but any damage caused during Saturday would leave the guys from MG Sport and Racing /North Warwickshire College hard pushed to repair the car overnight. With this in mind our plan must be to finish with a strong result on Saturday so that we can push for another top placing on Sunday”

Matt Beebe