“The problem is not the jump… the problem is the landing…” These were the words of rally club driver of the year 2002 and leader in the championship for 2003 in the two-wheel drive category, Fawaz Mohammed on Sunday afternoon.

The self proclaimed “roughnecks of motorsport” took their sport to the south central region last Sunday for the Bandit Run Stages Rally (I’d love to meet the person who comes up with these phrases: “Rally in the West Indeed”, “Roughnecks of Motorsport” and “Bandit Run”). After three highly successful events, including one night event, at Chaguaramas, The Trinidad & Tobago Rally Club held their fourth championship stages rally for 2003 in Basta Hall, Claxton Bay. The stage covered 3.3 kilometers of a mixture of dirt and loose gravel with a number of crests, and fast sweeping corners and was scheduled to be run six times.

Leading the field were John Powell and Harold Morley, both in Group N Mitsubishi Lancer EVO VII’s and Keverne McShine and Barry Mckenzie in the Group A Subaru Impreza’s. Two wheel competition was fierce with the SR20 powered B13’s of Shelford Robinson and club president Vishal Dhanraj up against the home-built Nissan Sunny turbo of Fawaz Mohammed and the Toyota Starlet GT of Micheal Dinnoo. Competition also featured Richard Ramsingh (Subaru Impreza) and Dave Rampersad (Mitsubishi Lancer GSR).

The late start helped to build the widely scattered crowd’s anticipation as they looked forward to the sight of flying cars and unbelievable speeds on the loose surface. At just after 12 noon, the drivers came through the stage at half pace to feel out the surface and to quell the flow of adrenaline.

First off the line at the start was John Powell whose time of 2 minutes 7 seconds set the pace for others to follow. For those of you reaching for the calculators, that works out to an average speed of over 90kmph… on a very loose surface!!!

This time was way too fast for the competition as the closest competitor was 7 seconds slower. Powell continued his fine run eventually setting the fastest time of the day at 2 minutes 3 seconds and copping top honors on the day beating the second place Morley by 42 seconds at the end.

A sure crowd favorite, Barry Mckenzie couldn’t sort out electrical problems on the Impreza and had to sit out the competition. The Subaru back luck continued through the day as Keverne McShine and Richard Ramsingh both had to retire from competition after SS5.