The Season Opening Jiangning Round of 2009 China Rally Championship, visiting the first time in the picturesque Nanjing city, Jiangsu Province on 12-14th June. Subaru Rally Team China (SRTC) sent a the latest model of Subaru Impreza WRX STI and three of Subaru Impreza WRX STI Spec C (two of them are for praivateer) for this rally. The main driver line up for this year is again Dean Herridge from Australia and Li Wei from China. The stages of this rally are located at the mountains of Jiangning County in Nanjing City. There are totally 11 gravel special stages with a total SS distance of 139.41km, while SS1 is Super Special Stage with 0.65km long.

The season opened on the afternoon of Friday 12 June with a Super Special stage in front of an enthusiastic crowd. With two full days of rallying ahead, Dean took a conservative approach to the short stage as setting the 5th fastest time. On the main part of Leg 1 from following day, stages are rather narrow and tricky, which made things quite difficult for drivers to control their cars at high speed and it proved to be true. After finishing the day, 51 cars of total 90 cars are retired. Dean finished the day in fourth place, 14.9 adrift from the leader.

Day Two was a very hard day for SRTC. Dean went on well the morning and maintained his 4th place. He looked to close in on 3rd-placed Juha Salo, however the intercom cut out after they hit a bump in the road about 5 km from the end of SS9. While co-driver tried to fix the problem, they were just going too fast for a corner and fallen over. Fortunately crew were not hurt, but they had no choice and retired.

Dean’s team mate, Li Wei finished the whole stages of the event smoothly in second place among Chinese drivers in international group, and the 5th overall, gaining 4 points for the team.
The SRTC crew will now have to quickly repair the car and regroup before the second round of the championship, Rally Beijing which begins in just two weeks time.