No Diffs, No Clutch, No Idea: Our First Gravel Rally at Bathurst

Quick confession before we start: before this year, I'd never driven a rally on gravel. Not once. My first season of rallying was 2025, and it was all tarmac — smooth, grippy, predictable — and it went well enough that Rachael and I won Production 4WD at Targa New Zealand.

Rachael, though? Different story. She's a seasoned gravel navigator, and she'd been in my ear since the day we teamed up: we need to get you on the dirt. So, mostly on her insistence, we bought a 1995 Subaru Impreza and went gravel rallying — her completely in her element, me with absolutely no idea what I was doing.

The Rally of Bathurst in March was my first gravel rally. Ever. The opening stage — a casual 19 kilometres — was the first gravel stage I'd ever driven in my life. Rachael, calling the notes beside me, was right at home. Me? Tiptoeing.

Tiptoeing (very slowly) onto the dirt

My plan for stage one was simple: go as slow and easy as humanly possible and try not to crash. Thirty-six cars had already been through, so the ruts were… character-building. The big surprise? No ABS. On tarmac you lean on it; on gravel there's none — you just have to feel it. Turns out I loved it.

The car's greatest hits

Here's the thing about a 30-year-old rally car: it comes with personality. Over the day, ours treated us to:

• A clutch with no clutch. All the way to the floor — nothing, nothing, nothing — then about 10 mm of actual bite right at the top. It drove me bananas.
• No diffs. Point it, plant it, and it lights up whichever wheel feels like spinning.
• A boost leak. A silicone reference line popped off mid-stage. The fix, in true privateer fashion: a screw and a zip tie.
• Suspension that had opinions and started making noises we're choosing not to think about.

Somehow none of it stopped us. We were sitting around 28th, going quicker every stage, keeping it together.

Dark and Horrible

Then came the stage that gives this whole post its energy: Dark and Horrible. (Yes, that's genuinely its name.)

Rachael called "four right into two right"… and my brain booked the tighter two right in as a fast four. We arrived a fair bit too hot, ran wide, and put it off the edge into the gutter — grass, a little air, the car going light and then thumping back to earth. Jemma, our long-suffering camera girl who travels with us and films every second of this circus, got the whole thing. Official crew report: "No one died." With 18 km of stage still to run, we gathered ourselves and got on with it.

Brakes optional

For the encore, the brakes cooked. Rolled up to a junction after a stage, went to turn, and the pedal went flat to the floor. They came back once they'd cooled — a bleed job for the trailer — but "will the brakes work at this corner" is not a question you want to be asking mid-rally.

Finishing in the dark

The last stages ran into the night, so we bolted on the big lights, hoped for the best, and cruised to the end. Anthony refuelled us between loops (thank you, Anthony), and there was a sausage sizzle waiting at the finish — honestly, maybe the highlight.

Verdict

We finished. 26th outright on my first-ever gravel rally, in a car missing a working clutch and both diffs, after nearly binning it on Dark and Horrible. Stressful? Absolutely. But the car held together, I learned an enormous amount, and we had a stupid amount of fun.

New clutch before Mitta, diffs down the track — and we'll be back.

Watch the full Rally of Bathurst debut below.