Alastair Scully will step up to a Hyundai i20 R5 for his assault on this year’s ARA National Championship presented by Kubota.
The 24-year-old secured his first ever overall podium and class win on the Sno*Drift Regional event earlier this month, running the Green APU team’s Mitsubishi Mirage. That outing was a precursor to a longer-term move into four-wheel-drive rallying for this year.
“I’m so excited about this,” Scully told DirtFish. “I drove my team-mate Patrick Gruszka’s Hyundai i20 R5 on the Show-Me [Super Regional] as a test last year and we had a lot of fun.
“Then we did Sno*Drift in the Mirage, which was great and it gave me my first class win. I didn’t win anything before, not even a running race. This is why I’m here!”
Scully is hoping to have the i20 in time for the second ARA round of the season, the 100 Acre Wood Rally on March 14-15.
Scully will join team-mate Patrick Gruszka in a Hyundai i20 R5
“It is going to be quite a step-up for this season,” said Scully. “I’m coming out of the two-wheel-drive Fiesta I’ve been using, with 197 horsepower on a good day, and going for this Hyundai i20 R5 for the rest of the year. It’s going to be quite a transition. I’ve had a little experience of a Nitrocross car, so I have some idea of a lot of power.
“The target for the rest of the year is just to take as much experience as we can. To be running in RC2 is like a dream come true for me. I don’t think we’re going to be in championship contention because that’s a very big step and it’s a complicated car and there’s a lot of nuances to learn about it.
“I’m hoping that, by the end of this year, we can really be competitive with everybody else that’s out there. We’re just trying to go out and compete with our team-mate Patrick and to get up to his level would be huge for us.”
