Rally Barossa 2026: 6th Outright, 2nd in P6, and a Guest in the Left Seat

The MSS Safety Rally Barossa was our second trip to South Australia this season, after the Rally of the Heartland back in autumn — and a very different kind of event. Round 2 of the South Australian Rally Championship, run as a compact one-day rally out of Angaston Oval in the Barossa Valley: ten special stages on closed gravel council roads through the surrounding hills and farmland, about 122 competitive kilometres, with the last stages run after dark under rally-car lights.

Two things made the weekend unusual for us. First, after a season of roadbook-only blind rallies, Barossa is a pace-noted event with a proper recce — two passes over the roads before racing them. Second, a late crew change put Adam Branford — 2021 SARC champion co-driver — in the left seat of the wagon, calling notes for a driver he'd never sat beside. We ran as car 12 in class P6, one of 19 starters in a field headlined by Toby Price's Mitsubishi Lancer.

The day: High Trial twice, and a rhythm that stuck

The rally opens with its biggest test: High Trial, 26 km — a third of a heat in one hit. We went 6th fastest on it, first time out with a brand-new crew pairing, and that set the tone. Sixth again on Pleasant Boundary, then through the middle loop — Green and Gold, McBeans, and second passes at both — we traded between 6th and 9th on stage, never outside the top ten all day.

Up front, Declan and Zoe Dwyer's Evo VI was in a race of its own, fastest on eight of the ten stages. Price's rally lasted one stage — electrical issues on High Trial — one of four crews that didn't make the finish.

The interruption, and the dark

The second pass of High Trial got messy: Neil Jamieson and Craig Beard put their Escort off the road mid-stage, and the stage was stopped behind them. Nine crews — us included — were credited a notional time for SS8, the fairest fix timing can offer when a stage can't be run clean.

Then the lights went on. Mossy Pine and Corner Stone are short, sharp blasts — under six kilometres each — run in the dark to close the rally. Equal 6th and 8th on those brought the wagon home to Angaston in one piece.

The result

6th outright, 5th in the SARC round, and 2nd in P6 — 1:14:25.8 across the ten stages, with the class won by the Dwyers on their way to winning the whole event. The margins either side of us tell the story of the day: 33.8 seconds to Cary and Russell Seabrook's Impreza RS ahead, and 37.5 seconds back to Steven Zimmermann's 2025 Toyota GR Yaris behind. A 1995 Impreza wagon holding off a rally car thirty years its junior is exactly the kind of thing this project exists for.

The full classification, every crew's stage times and the photo gallery are on the event page — including the stage-by-stage table with High Trial, Green and Gold and the night stages broken out.

Next up: the Snowy River Sprint, 12–13 September — back on tarmac, deep in Gippsland.