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- 2010 Energywise Rally: Day #3 with Awesome Dragon
2010 Energywise Rally: Day #3 with Awesome Dragon
A team of Trade Me staff is crewing a Commodore Omega in the 2010 AA Energywise Rally, courtesy of Holden New Zealand. Over four days the team will blog about their rally experiences.
Beautiful but nippy morning in the lovely Palmy for the hand over from Team Concrete Boots (Shanin and Chris) to us, Team Awesome Dragon.
The day started off with a bit of humour from team captain Nathan when he arrived at breakfast sporting a mighty plate of beans, onions, mushrooms and scrambled egg - knowing full well he was co-pilot for the first leg of the trip, and the "no windows down" rule would be enforced to ensure minimum drag. Needless to say, vice-captain Sean was worried.
We managed to execute a perfect rolling start as we set off, and made great progress keeping close to the other competitors in the early hours.
As Sean guided the Holden towards Pahiatua, the hills spread the convoy out with drivers keeping their feet light to conserve fuel. The awesome downhill runs, combined with a set of 25kph tight corners definitely tested the handling of the Omega, and the mettle of Sean. One such occasion caused Nathan to let out a schoolgirl squeal as Sean tested the grip, however he was quick to quote the advice imparted to him by a Trade Me exec team member the day before: “Braking is for p*****s.”
Making good use of the stock trucks between Waipukurau and Waipawa we attempted a bit of drafting, and managed to see our litres per 100km dip down to 8.6. After passing the immaculate rugby fields of Te Aute College near Hastings we were feeling slightly confident. However a flurry of cars passed us as we headed past the pink waters of the Hastings fountain and made us concerned we were going to be stung with the pace car penalty.
Then it was straight along the coast to Napier for our lunch stop, after which Nathan took over in the driver's seat. We discovered we were about 7% slower than the pace car but were expecting as much.
The weather in Napier was abysmal as we left, and Nathan exercised great concentration guiding the Holden over the hills on the Napier/Taupo road. The long straights of the hills toward the Titiokura Saddle meant using momentum was key.
The road was dotted with tree-felling work crews, and road works too, making for a bit of stop-start action. However, smooth acceleration and constant tapping of the tiptronic meant it made little impact on our fuel efficiency.
After Taupo it was all smooth driving through to Rotorua. Extensive straights, and more exposed road were appreciated when the weather started to clear, making for drier conditions. We’re hoping this helped us make up for our earlier time deficit (always in the back of our minds).
There was much more traffic on the road than we’d experienced earlier requiring some hair-raising overtaking, and at times some tailgating when coasting downhill. That said, the only occasion where "the bird" made an appearance on Nathan’s hand was when a non-rally driver pulled out blindly in Rotorua, almost adding a new hood ornament to the Omega.
On Day 1 our crew came in with 18.2% improvement on the Omega’s nominal fuel efficiency of 9.3 litres/100km, and the Day 2 team saw an improvement of 5.43%.
The only issue we’ve had seems to be with the accuracy of the on-board computer's measurement of fuel efficiency - with 8.4 litres/100km showing at the end of today we’re hoping for greater things when the results are confirmed.
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