It was the first time an event like this has taken place in Malaysia, as Wheelspin Events organised a Rally X in the area surrouding the Sepang F1 Circuit. SR Motorsport decided to enter one car with me at the wheel to see what it would be like, and from the comments of all the competitors and organiser, it was a success. I drove the Group A subaru Impreza that I usually drive in the Malaysian Rally Championship, and was up against some of the MRC regulars such as Gunaseelan Rajoo in his Putra Evo 3.

The way a Rally X works is that each driver gets 5 timed runs on a route decided by the organisers, and at the end the times are added together, and the person with the fastest 5 times wins. With this type of format, it means even small errors can be very costly as the route was about 1km in length, and the times were about 1 minute only, which meant that seconds counted. From the word go it was flat out, and on the first run, Guna and I were tied in the lead. On the second timed run, I pulled out a one second advantage. It was proving to be very close between the two of us. On the third run, the black clouds were looming very close, and immidiately after Guna and I finished our passes, the heavens opened on the track. But, on that run, I pulled out another two seconds and made the total lead three seconds.

Unfortunately, in the wet mud I started to make a couple of errors, both at a tight hairpin that I just couldnt get right in the mud, even though i had no problem with it in the dry. I lost one second on the fourth run, and another two seconds on the fifth. Which meant that after five passes of the stages, Guna and I had exactly the same total time. The organisers decided the best thing to do was to have a shootout between the two of us, where we would both do the stage one last time, and the fastest person wins the event. This got the crowd excited, and everyone watched the both of us as we did the course for the last time. I was quite nervous as I realised that even the slightest of errors when it was this close was going to be costly. But thankfully, everything went fine and I even got the muddy hairpin correct, and ended up 1.4 seconds quicker than Guna and therefore winning the event.

It was a really fun weekend, and a great feeling getting my first overall rally win. Hopefully it is only the first of many, and next round will be just as close as this one was, because it was really good fun fighting for the win like that. The next round is on the 24th of August at the same location.