Sunday, the last day :'(

Well the last day (and a half - including the party) of the rally was an absolute doozy. I haven't been on such a roller coaster of highs and lows in a long time. From barely being able to contain tears as I watched Ford's 1-2 hopes disappear from the 'Repco eye in the sky' live helicopter feed as Jari-Matti threw his car into the bank and bounced off, to partying it up with Ford and Subaru teams and famous faces later on. It has been an incredible week, no-one can deny such. -Even my mate Duri that I took along to the after party, enjoyed herself, she found herself standing along with famous faces of rallying and not knowing who they were at all!

Interesting topic, that 'eye in the sky', even though we had it last year, because I haven't been to any other WRC events internationally, I didn't know that we were the only one to have such a thing. Speaking of other firsts, we were also the first to have live in-car footage streaming from kiwi Hayden Paddon's car on the famous Whaanga Coast stage on Sunday. And this seems to just cement the fact that we are one of the best events on the calendar! Woot!

So the agenda for Sunday in regards to what I did was pretty relaxed. I watched a lot of footage and the instantaneous awesomeness of the WRC computers with the splits and timing, which is much better than the wrc.com site timing. If you can picture that!

I actually even managed to take a couple of hundred picutres! Which was awesome because I'd missed out on Saturday/Friday with being too busy interviewing and transcribing. Hence why this blog post looks a little more colourful than the last one.

Now, I met some more people, including Paul Marinelli, who does the PR work for Repco and has an amazing portfolio of clients in both motorsport and other things. He's based in Australia. Paul helped Kim and I out with the main job for the day, escorting drivers/co-drivers from the Ceremonial Finish to the Press Room for the Post-event Press Conference. There was a little bit of drama with this job, as winner Sebastien Loeb, his co-driver Daniel Elena and his press officer refused to get into the van that would take them to the media centre, but Kim was on it - she followed them through the Citroen service area and made sure that they got upstairs. Kim said Sebastien was motioning to all the team with his kiwi trophy going 'peck, peck!', which is cute, but doesn't take away from the fact that the French refused to follow the plan already set in place.

After the press conference that was sort-of it for me! I didn't really know what to do with myself, talked to a few different people about up-coming things in the NZ motorsport scene and overseas. Then made my way home to get ready to go out! As Jette from Norway said earlier in the day, 'the rally party is the best part!' I met and re-met many people, Chris Atkinson: 'I met you last year!!' - Me, 'wow, I must have been really drunk, cause I don't remember that!'

It was really awesome, more people came out than last year - and though, someone said that it was only really Ford again, it was different people for me and there were a few Subaru people as well. Nice to see a lot of drivers and co-drivers out having a good time, even if their results were not the desired ones they'd hoped for over the weekend.

Also, for the reading pleasure, the article that Waikato Times reporter Kate Monahan wrote on volunteers in the rally. The article was full page in the Magazine section of the big Saturday paper for our area. The front of the section also had a full page photo also by Mark Taylor who took the photo of Tom and I, showing a really awesome bird's eye view of Petter Solberg's car in the service park. I'll see if I can find some kind of link...(Slideshow of his work from the rally) Anyway, here are the parts that I've scanned on. (Click to bring up big-for the article) + Link of online version that I just found..

Plus some other coverage of the rally of interest: (Not to do with me personally :) )

Stuff.co.nz/Waikato Times Loeb's impossible win - Drivers want changes (Matt Richens)

nzherald.co.nz/The New Zealand Herald Loeb wins Rally NZ - Loeb slams rules despite victory Resurgent Mason dominates local field Calm Frenchman pushes to limit to snatch WRC (Eric Thompson, Robert Lowe and NZPA)

This week's GPWeek has some great articles on the rally and the whole regulations and tactics issue as well as a piece on the accessibility of the WRC drivers: It's well worth getting the email updates and actually reading it, though I tend to only read the rally section, it also covers MotoGP and Formula 1.

That's it for me for the moment I think. If you're really keen, there is some really good coverage from our local news programmes on the rally, even if they get the place of Latvala's first win wrong... (SWEDEN DAMN IT) One, TV3 (1) (2). But there is heaps more out there! This is just what I could be bothered finding! Those in my class, you totally should have gotten involved, it's a lot bigger than you think.