Whether flat-out on the tarmac or deep in the West Australian bush, Canberra drivers sprayed the winner's champagne after success in two very different motor racing disciplines on the weekend.
It was the first time that ACT race drivers had won in the same state, on the same day, one on the track and another on the rally stages.
Reigning Australian rally champion Harry Bates bounced back from a broken suspension on the first day of the two-day WA round of the national rally championship to claim an overall win while his cousin, 19-year-old Zach Bates, posted his first-ever round win in the Super 2 category of the V8 Supercar championship.
Harry Bates and co-driver Coral Taylor had headed to Perth as the top seeds but early in the event hit a hole in the road and broke the front suspension of their Finnish-built Toyota Yaris GR Rally 2 car.
They lost a precious two minutes limping the car back to service and were slapped with a further one and a half minutes time penalty.
But a quick-fire fix by the Canberra support crew had Bates and Taylor back on the pace and they peeled off four stage wins a row thereafter, finishing fourth for the day.
During the second heat on Sunday, they pressed hard as their key rival Scott Pedder had an engine issue, won the heat and secured the overall round win.
Meanwhile, at the old Wanneroo raceway north of Perth, Zach Bates in the Walkinshaw Andretti Commodore was pushing equally hard in the Super 2 "feeder" support category for V8 Supercars.
Although quickest during practice, he couldn't quite replicate those times during qualifying but still was right in contention, finishing runner-up across the two days of racing to win the overall WA round.
In the second of the Super 2 races, Bates was fortunately up the front of the pack and well clear of a series of incidents, which red-flagged the race twice, the first time as a result of a car fire and oil on the track, and the second when a competitor was clipped and crashed spectacularly.
Consistency in WA has elevated Zach Bates to third in the Super 2 championship, 78 points behind the leader and last year's champion Kai Allen. The next round is on the streets of Townsville in July.
Harry is the son of Neal Bates, Australia's four-time rally champion, while Zach is the son of Neal's twin brother Rick, an advanced driver trainer and winner of the Panama-Alaska rally.
