Nursing a Dying Clutch Through Our First ARC Round at Narooma

If you've read the Bathurst and Mitta posts, you'll know about the clutch. Pedal to the floor, nothing, nothing, nothing, then about 10 mm of bite at the very top. We complained about it, planned to replace it, didn't replace it, and kept racing with it. At the Narooma Forest Rally, it finally decided enough was enough — which was inconvenient timing, because Narooma was easily the biggest event we'd tackled.

Stepping up to the ARC

Narooma was our debut in the Australian Rally Championship — the ARC, the top level of the sport in this country — with Rachael on the notes. After a few club and state rounds finding our feet on gravel, this was a real step up: proper championship crews, fast South Coast forest stages, and a much higher standard all round — including our first-ever stage on pace notes we wrote ourselves. Just being on the entry list felt like a milestone.

And then the clutch

The event runs over two heats. We got through Heat 1, and somewhere along the way the clutch went from "annoying" to "genuinely failing." From there it became less about chasing times and more about keeping the car moving — managing every gearshift, every start, every hairpin around a clutch that barely wanted to work.

It's a specific kind of stress, nursing a broken car through stages while trying not to make it worse. But we kept it going, got through both heats, and crossed the line — 24th in Heat 1, up to 18th in Heat 2, and 18th outright overall. (Every stage time — including how much faster our second passes were — is on the season numbers page.)

Not the result, but the right kind of finish

Eighteenth at our first ARC round, on a clutch that was actively dying, is a result we're genuinely proud of. This is grassroots motorsport — we're not a factory team with a spare car and a truck full of parts. Some weekends the win is just making it to the finish with the car more or less intact, and Narooma was one of those.

It also, finally, forced our hand on that clutch. Turns out you can only ignore a problem for so many events before it makes the decision for you.