And, just like that, Robert Burns sits alone once more in the heart of Dunedin.
It’s Monday. The Monday rally fans from across New Zealand and – in any other year – from around the world fear most. The Monday after the ENEOS Otago International Classic Rally.
The hangover is, however, not quite as bad as it might be. While COVID restrictions were lifted the week before the event, allowing fan attendance at Friday night’s ceremonial start, they came too late to pull together Otago’s legendary post-rally party.
Instead of debriefing over a cask or two of Speight’s Gold Medal Ale, Sunday night was a bit more reflective, with the organizing team delighted with the two-day competition and the reception the event received.
The rally ran under tighter restrictions last year, but not at all in 2020. The heady days of 2019 and Mads Østberg charging about the place in the Team Rossendale Ford Escort have, at times, felt like a lifetime away.
Last weekend Dunedin was a place full of hope and desire as rallying brought these famous South Island roads to life once more.
The 2022 event was something of a halfway house in the pandemic journey, but next season, with a trailing wind, everything will be back to normal and rallying’s rockstars can roll back into town. And they will be very, very welcome.
That actually sounds a bit ungrateful to Hamish Bond and ‘Fanga’ Dan Woolhouse. Last weekend’s celebs were homegrown megastars with Olympic gold medals and an ability to dance a drift at 120mph.
Bond’s adventure was cut short with a couple of early retirements, but not before he demonstrated plenty of pace, potential and absolute bravery aboard a Vantage-backed Subaru. Woolhouse wheeled the world’s most famous Mk2 brilliantly, bringing his own art to the stages in a demonstration of exquisite car control.
Crossing the Shag River on Switchback Road, with Palmerston behind you, there was only one place to be on Saturday morning: the junction with Guffie Road and the start of the first stage of the New Zealand Rally Championship season.
Auckland-born but now a proud South Islander, Nev Shapley was there. In the field. Waiting for the sun to come up and the stage to start.
“You couldn’t miss this,” he grinned. “There was no way I was going to – I’ve driven down from Greymouth overnight with a couple of mates. [I] got here pretty early and got my head down for a couple of hours and now we’re ready.
“It’s the best rally in the world, mate. Once that sun’s up, take a look around you. But don’t tell anybody, eh, we don’t want everybody knowing how good the South Island is!”
It’s impossible to argue. With the first hint of the fall just starting to tinge the colors which backdrop these sensational stages, there really was nowhere better last weekend.
Hayden Paddon’s surprised anybody’s surprised. He grew up in Geraldine, halfway up the coast between Dunedin and Christchurch.
His team’s based out of Cromwell, just outside Queenstown, in the middle. The commute, either north across State Highway 85 or the southern loop on the 8 delivers the same staggering scenery. It’s rolling hills with cloud carpeting the valleys as far as the eye can see. It’s always the same down here… the rest of the world can go figure.
Down the last couple of decades, Dunedin has truly embraced the Otago Rally. It’s a special, special event in a place that’s just made for rallying.
The next 51 weeks are definitely going to drag.
