Hello and welcome to the first of many updates through the 2011 Rally Season from Team TOTAL.

We are excited to have on board TOTAL Lubricants as our key sponsor for the 2011 season along with many others who supported us in 2010 – Hunting & Fishing, RETKO Haulage, Geartech, Automotive Direct, Advanced Engineering, MRF Tyres, Andy’s Screenprint & Signs, Studio Madfish, The ROCK FM, Brendan Lodge Photography and Orcus Print.

Geof and Phillip are really looking forward to the 2011 season and we hope you enjoy the action of the 2011 NZ Rally Championship - check out our website and catch the action from our in car videos.

The annual running of the Barton’s Line Rally sprint near Ekatahuna was held last Sunday and signaled the start of the Rally Season for Team TOTAL Having won the event last year with a time of 4min 12 sec, Driver Geof Argyle and Co-driver Phillip Deakin were set to make it 2 out of 2 in the Team TOTAL Evo 8.

The Barton’s Line rally sprint uses 7.1km of a longer stage used in the Wairarapa Rally Championship which makes it an ideal road to test the changes made to the Mitsubishi Evo 8 car during the off season.

It wasn’t long before it was clear that the car was quicker than last season and by the end of 3rd run Argyle was already closing in on last years winning time with a run of 4min 13.2 sec.

With the main competition coming from Richard Mason and Adam Bligh, Argyle made sure he maintained a lead of a few seconds over them both in every run and on the forth run Argyle beat last years time with 4min 10.9 sec.

With 2 runs to go and the gravel sweeping off and to produce a fast racing line, Argyle set off to run a sub 4 min stage time. The fifth run produced a quicker time of 4min and 7.1 sec and while off to a great start in the 6th and final run, Argyle missed judged a left hand corner 1 min into the stage and lost valuable seconds getting back on the pace - The final stage time came in at 4 min 4.2 sec.

View the winning run on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RmV9_ILHYc

“It’s a great start to our season, the changes to the car have paid off with improved handling and speed, so we’ll do further testing at Whariti and then confidently head into Rally Otago as ready as we can be” says Argyle.

The next event is the Whariti Peak Hill Climb near Woodville on March 12 & 13. The first round of the NZ Rally Championship is Rally Otago on April 8-10 Rally.