Driving Blind at Mitta — Still Without a Clutch

The plan after Bathurst was simple: fix the clutch. It was terrible — pedal to the floor, nothing, nothing, nothing, then about 10 mm of actual clutch right at the top. We didn't fix the clutch. So the very next weekend we rocked up to the Mitta Mountain Rally with the exact same clutch that had been doing my head in seven days earlier. Rachael wasn't navigating this one — Jenny Cole was in the hot seat — but the clutch, sadly, came along for the ride.

Nobody told me what "blind" felt like

I knew Mitta was a blind rally going in. What I hadn't worked out beforehand was what "blind" actually means when you're the one driving. No pacenotes. Nobody calls the corner. You get a road book that keeps you on the right roads, and past that you just drive to whatever you can see coming. Jenny put it simply: "driving to what you can see." Sounds fine, right up until you're carrying a fair bit of speed into a corner you've never laid eyes on, with no idea if it tightens.

It's also a great way to find rocks. I found two. The first was sitting on the inside of a corner — I was following everyone's tracks, right on the line, and then just, bang. Never saw it. The second one I did see, panicked, went to steer around it, and somehow tucked it straight under the car instead. Between them I dented the floor pan hard enough to see it from the driver's seat, and after that the car didn't much fancy going in a straight line.

The Impreza wasn't doing me any favours either. Still no diffs, so you plant it and it just picks a wheel and a direction, usually not the one you asked for. And nothing under 4,000 rpm, so every hairpin turns into a little maths problem — enough speed to keep it on boost, not so much that you throw it off the road. Get it wrong and you're stuck, because you can't grab first on the move. It did come good once: a big four-wheel slide where I clicked a gear, planted it, and for the first time all day the thing hooked up and drove out clean. Felt like a hero for about four seconds.

A rough one

I wasn't alone in the struggle. Mitta's got a reputation for being brutal and 2026 was no different — of a field of more than fifty cars, only 21 made it to the finish. That's not really a result, it's a survival count. Long day, too: 5:30 start, 27 degrees, a 50 k stage buried in the middle, 170-odd race kilometres by the end. At one point I asked Jemma — she comes to everything and films the lot — what time it was, because it honestly felt like 10 pm. It was half five in the afternoon.

But we got it home. 16th outright — first blind rally, dodgy clutch, no diffs, a dent in the floor and not much clue what I was doing for a good chunk of it. Two gravel rallies down, still figuring it out.