Successful Shakedown for Brendan at RACC Rally Spain

Brendan Reeves and Rhianon Gelsomino have successfully completed shakedown of Rally Spain as the second-fastest Drive DMACK Fiesta Trophy team.

After two long days of recce over mixed surfaces, Brendan and Rhianon knew that car set up would be an important factor going into the event and have made good use of the shakedown stage in Salou. Whilst the stage is not typical of the stages of the rally itself, the seat time has given Brendan an added confidence boost ahead of the ceremonial start and the street stage in Barcelona later today (Thursday).

Brendan initially completed two passes of the shakedown stage in Salou before returning to service to make some set-up changes.

“They watered the stage to keep the dust down for spectators, so it was quite grippy with some ruts,” Brendan said.  “On the tarmac there were four chicanes, so braking was quite difficult coming into these.”

As the shakedown is a mixed surface of both tarmac and gravel, Brendan made a few changes to his set-up before his third run of the shakedown stage.

“Now we are making some suspension changes to see how the car reacts. I had the car on the wrong anti-lag setting, so we are going to try a more aggressive setting now”, he added.

After Brendan’s third and final shakedown run, his time had improved by 1.6 seconds.  Brendan was happy with the set-up changes that he has made and was able to take the third run a little easier to preserve his tyres.  The tyres that the Drive DMACK Fiesta Trophy teams completed shakedown on come from each crew’s tyre allocation and will therefore be the tyres used in SS1 tonight in Barcelona as well as on tomorrow’s opening stages.

This afternoon marks the Ceremonial Start of Rally RACC, round 12 of the World Rally Championship, in Salou and the teams will then head to Barcelona for the opening stage of the rally, SS1. They will have a large re-group in Barcelona so this gives the team a chance to not only meet with their fans and sign autographs but it will also allow them time to review their in-car footage from shakedown before the gravel stages of the rally proper commence tomorrow.

During the event, follow Brendan and Rhianon's progress on their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages.