This weekends rally was Round 3 of the Malaysian Rally Championship that was held in Kuantan. It was my first time rallying in Kuantan, as in the past, due to one reason or another I have had to skip it. With the disadvantage of lack of road knowledge and the fact there was a great amount of competition this round, including New Zealand's 2wd Champion and India's Championship runner up, I didn't have high hopes of a top 3 finish. However, the car had been nicely prepared, and after recce on Friday I could tell I would have good fun on the stages as they were fast and very technical, with many crests corners and obstacles.

On Saturday morning the rally got underway, and driving my Group A Subaru Impreza prepared by SR Motorsport, I headed into the first stage. I wasn't going flat out, but at a steady pace, and my stage time was only a few seconds of 2nd place, although I was in 5th place. I could tell it was going to be a close rally with a lot of guys fighting over second. I went into the second stage with a little more speed, however the handling wasn't quite to my liking, and with the technicality of the stages, I made a mistake going over a crest and lost control of the rear of the car, clipping the mud bank and then spinning across the stage. Unfortunately the lower arm had bent and the car couldn't be driven any further. It was a quite a blow for me, as I had been hoping to make it to the finish, and I hadn't crashed the car in quite a long time, but these things happen, and thanks to Superally format, I could continue the next day with a time penalty.

So early Sunday morning we re-scrutineered the car with its new lower arms and re-started the rally. The time penalty had put us over an hour behind the rest of the field, so a good overall finish was out of the question, but there are points awarded for each day, so my aim for the day was to see if I could get some points for the day. It had rained overnight, but thankfully Silverstone, who sponsored my tires for this event, had a new wet tire which worked very well in the slightly wet conditions, and in the first stage of the day, I was only 14 seconds behind Karamjit Singh in his Evolution 8, and over half a minute clear of the rest of the field. I took it a little easier through the second stage knowing that Karamjit would go quicker, and I had a nice gap behind me. However, another small mistake left me with a puncture which had to be changed after the stage. Not only did I lose time driving on the puncture during the stage, but received a ten second penalty for being late after changing it.

So in the final set of stages after the service, I gave it one final push and thankfully regained my second place, and pulled out a 23 second buffer to the next car of Gunaseelan Rajoo in his Evolution 9. So after a horrid first day, I received some points for my second place finish on the second day, and a confidence booster for the next round which will be on August 2-3 in Terreganu.