Cayenne entered in new SUV class in ARC

[TrevMcRev]

Victorian rally driver Mark Fawcett debuts a Cayenne in the Australian Rally Championship.

 

http://rally.com.au/arc-news/german-debut-for-former-victorian-champ

 

 

The decision to go with the Porsche SUV was not a choice taken lightly by Fawcett, who admitted that he’d spent a long time looking at specifications of eligible cars before opting to go with the Cayenne.

“I looked at a lot of cars, but in the end the Porsche had a great power to weight ratio. On top of that Porsche has a great motorsport history and that was something that I wanted to leverage. I saw that Porsche had run a pair of Cayenne’s in the Trans-Siberia Rally a couple of years back, and that was what really pushed me across the line.”

“It’s a 4.5 litre V8, it sounds incredible! It makes about 350 horsepower, it is big and strong, and it has enormous brakes, which we’ll need because it’s 2.1 tonnes in weight!” Fawcett added.

The finished car looks immaculate, but it didn’t start out that way, Fawcett purchasing two damaged Cayenne’s to piece together the completed car. And the build wasn’t without its issues too.

“One of the hardest areas was understanding the electronics in the car. Everything is all controlled by the ECU, including the traction control, the ABS and the stability control. You don’t really want any of those things active in a rally car, especially ABS on a gravel road.”

“So we spent a lot of time trying to work out how to turn them off. About a week ago we still hadn’t got it right, and I was looking at having to pull our entry. But I ran at a local autocross last weekend and the car drove and handled like it should, so we’re pushing ahead and we’ll use this weekend’s rally as a big test,” said Mark.

 

[TrevMcRev]

The twin turbo would have been interesting!

[Vas]

Go the Porsche !