Well what a rally Portugal has been. After our problems on Friday and 15 minutes of SuperRally, we thought victory was no possibility. Well we thought wrong, as today we won the SWRC after a very tough rally.

Unfortunately overnight leader Yazeed Al Rajhi retired on the first long stage this morning. At the same time we made up the 54 seconds to second place, so not only did we jump into second but into the lead. After we passed the limping Al Rajhi in the stage we decided that we had to take it easy to get the car to the finish in difficult conditions. Over the weekend we have won 14 of the 18 stages in SWRC and it has been encouraging that we have been able to set some times competitive with Sebastian Ogier.

It is great to win although it is certainly not the way that we wanted to win. However the maxium 25 points really boosts our championship and moves up to 2 nd, just 6 points behind leader Craig Breen who misses the next round in New Zealand.

You can see our following video blog including the teams celebrations from Portugal:

I would like to take this chance to thank all our partners and supporters. Also a huge thanks to our ASM Motorsport team who have done a great job in a very difficult event. The team compromising of John, Alex, Mike, Marc, Ivan, Neil, Jordi, Josep and Albert worked brilliantly and helped to keep us in the event. A huge thanks to Katie and Kerrie who have been doing a great job with the updates throughout the week. Also thanks to our friend Jiro from Japan who was able to help us with weather information.

Now it is back on the plane home to New Zealand where we will spend the next couple of months in preparation for our next SWRC event Brother Rally of New Zealand. While home we will work further on trying to secure the rest of the budget for this years campaign as well as start working our on 2013 plans and budgets. We will keep you posted, but in the mean time. Thank you.