Q & A: Brendo on Rally Lithgow

This weekend Brendo takes to the gravel stages of the Rally of Lithgow - a round of the NSW Rally Championship. Despite his busy schedule, we caught up with him to ask a few questions about this weekend's event.

This will be your first gravel rally since the Fiesta International Shootout in December.  How excited are you to be getting back behind the wheel and getting sideways?
The Fiesta International Shootout was a mind blowing experience, one that won’t be forgotten quickly. Competing mainly on ice was really challenging, so I cant wait to drive on some more forgiving surfaces and get back behind the wheel on the gravel roads in Australia.

In this event you are driving a Subaru owned by RallySchool.com.au.  Apart from driving the car at RallySchool’s weekend courses as an instructor, have you driven the car in competition before?
This car is only very new to Rallyschool so we have never competed in it before and are really keen to see how it shapes up. The Rallyschool cars are generally only used at the school, so it’s a great opportunity to demonstrate some of our machinery against the state’s best and build some brand exposure while sliding around the forest.

How different is the set up of this car to your own RS that you ran in the same event last year?
The car runs the same DMS suspension as the RS, but dramatic changes will be having a powerful turbocharged engine - something that the RS lacks. Where the RS changes down gears up hills, this weekend we will be upchanging “lol”.

You’ve got a really busy couple of months ahead of you with a few different events all in different cars.  Do you see this as a negative or a positive?
It definitely helps driving as many cars as you can because you never know what situation a rally can throw at you. I’ve always loved the challenge of driving such a variety of cars because it makes your thought process of how to react in situations much more refined, and you tend to expect and know what a car is going to do next.
Going to different surfaces with different configuration cars is testing, but you can only learn by having a go. The hardest side of driving different cars, I find, is writing the correct pacenotes to suit each car.

Having competed in the event last year, what are you hoping to get out of the rally this time round?
I’m gearing up to compete in Rally Queensland in a couple of weeks, so Lithgow will be a great shakedown to prepare myself and get some pacenoting practice in before competing on an international stage.
The rally had lots of varying conditions last year and a real mix of stages, some similar to the likes of Queensland. Hopefully we can finish with a solid result and make a progressive start to our gravel campaign.