The opening day of the Rally of Canberra was a disaster for Michael Guest and his Pirtek Les Walkden Rallying team, and the second day was hardly any better.

The weekend left the likeable Guest bemoaning his bad luck, but positive about the rest of the Australian Rally Championship series.

Yesterday a kangaroo ended his push for a strong points result in the nation’s capital, but he rejoined the field today looking to take as many as possible of the 40 points on offer.

However, in the end, Guest had to settle for just 12 points after a series of setbacks left him in tenth place in Heat Two.

After a strong start to the day he had a flat tyre on the third stage and was forced to stop and make a change. This cost Guest and co-driver David Green over three minutes and blew any chance of a good result.

So Guest and his team committed the remainder of the event to testing, looking to develop the right set-up for Rally Queensland, the next round of the Championship.

“This is up there as my worst weekend in rallying,” Guest said. “We couldn’t take a trick, but in the end we focussed on the chance to test and be positive about the season going forward.”

“Yesterday we had the bent control arm and the kangaroo. Today we had the flat tyre out of nowhere, we had to stop for a guy who rolled in front of us, we had to slow down when Eli Evans had a problem, so it was non-stop drama after drama.

“But we’ll take 12 points. It is all about amassing enough across the season, and while this result has certainly made winning the title a much bigger ask, we’ll just have to go flat out when things get underway in Queensland next month and hope our luck turns.

“We learnt some more today and that is always good. This was just my second outing in a new car with a new team, and we are all really committed to doing good things this season.

“We need a good result in Queensland though; it is as simple as that.”

The 12 points in Canberra, combined with the 43 collected at the season opener in Western Australia, leaves Guest in seventh tenth place in the Championship with 55 points.

Toyota driver Neal Bates leads the series on 148 points.

Points after round 2 of the Australian Rally Championship

1 Neal Bates 148
2 Simon Evans 112
3 Darren Windus 94
4 Spencer Lowndes 86
4 Eli Evans 86
6 Justin Dowel 62
7 Michael Guest 55