The Otago Sports Car Club's Circle Hill Rallysprint was an ideal shakedown event for winner Emma Gilmour before she tackles the next round of the national championship at the end of the month.
Held near Milburn recently, it provided a chance for the Dunedin driver to clock up ''really good mileage'' in her recently completed Suzuki Swift Maxi over the four 7km runs.
Her team had tidied up issues found during the car's first full-length debut, the International Rally of Whangarei last month, which was a mixed bag of mechanical breakages interspersed with two top-three stage times.
The radical new Swift was ''really different'' from her previous Group N cars and as the development side of driving it settled down, she was able to fully enjoy its potential, Gilmour said.
Her best three runs were combined to give her the top time of 10min flat, ahead of Balclutha drivers Rhys Gardner (10min 6sec) and Dean Bond (10min 8sec).
Gardner, driving his Mitsubishi Evo 7, will also be competing in the New Zealand Rally Championship's third round, the Daybreaker Rally, in Manawatu on June 29. The 31-year-old will then join eight of New Zealand's most talented up-and-coming race and rally drivers at the 2013 Elite MotorSport Academy to be run in Dunedin.
The new Circle Hill Rallysprint location utilised part of an Otago Rally stage and attracted 23 entrants.
