IT’S been a decade between drinks, but Scott Pedder has returned to the Australian Rally Championship winners’ circle.
On the weekend, Pedder and co-driver Glenn Macneall took the overall honours in Rally Queensland – marking the former’s first ARC round win since the 2014 Rally Australia event.
That was the year that Pedder won the championship.
The last four titles have all gone the way of the Bates brothers (three to Harry and one to Lewis), but not even they could defeat Pedder at Gympie.
“It’s a lot of relief, to be honest and 10 years in the making,” Pedder said.
“We knew we had the pace, we’ve just been unlucky for the first two events, but it came together over the last two days thanks to some luck we had with other competitors bombing out, but it feels fantastic.
“I started the year saying if you finished every heat and you’re relatively conservative you can win the championship.
“With the points system the way it is, you can’t afford to drop heats, and that’s the plan moving forward. You’ve just got to finish.”
Harry Bates was among those to blot his copybook, having a Saturday DNF before bouncing back to win the Sunday heat.
“I’m really sorry to the team for my mistake. It’s pretty costly and obviously has put a dent in our championship aspirations, but just thankful to them that we’re able to repair it and come back fighting today,” Bates said.
“Today didn’t go perfectly either, but we’ve still salvaged a reasonable result out of it.
“It’s really tight now between Scott and I, so it’s exciting at the halfway point in the season, and I knew that it was going to come down to some pretty tight battles between he and I.
“I think today was probably the first day where we both actually had a reasonable enough run to be able to fight it out. I think we’re going to have plenty of them as the season progresses.”
Bates’ championship lead now stands at a reduced 11-point margin over Pedder. Eddie Maguire is third with ex-Supercars driver Alex Rullo fourth, while Lewis Bates has dropped to seventh after failing to collect any points from Rally Queensland.
Victoria will host Round 4 of the six-round season, the Gippsland Rally on August 9-11.
