Day1, 18 April Brendan Reeves led the way for Mazda Motorsport today with a solid succession of blistering stage times in his RX-8 SP that included a stage win on the way to snaring third outright at the end of the day's racing. With the first couple of today's stages deemed by most as able to be completed within the allocated time, it was on the day's fourth stage at Nook where things really began to heat up.

Jason White came out swinging in his 2011 Lamborghini Gallardo and secured stage wins throughout the afternoon until Reeves showed just what he and the RX-8 SP are capable of with victory on the tough Holwell stage. Today's consistent performance puts Reeves in third place just 12 seconds behind the Nissan GT-R.

Reeves was quietly satisfied with his day's work. “Today was all about getting more settled in the car and finding our rhythm and we did just that. Conditions got tougher when the rain started this afternoon but to end the day in third and have bagged a stage win sets us up nicely,” he said. The momentum continued for Mazda as Simon Evans piloted the Mazda3 MPS to first place on every one of today's Showroom class stages despite suffering a tyre blowout 300 metres from the end of this morning's Deloraine stage. Evans now leads the Showroom category by 35 seconds over the Renault Megane RS250 of Gavin James. “Sue and I thoroughly enjoyed today and although it's still very early days, it's nice to have built a lead in the Showroom class. We're faced with some tough competition but the Mazda3 MPS hasn't missed a beat and continues to set the Showroom standard.” Today was more mixed for Matt Rickards as he suffered an early off-road excursion in his RX-8 SP before recovering to post some consistent times. Although currently out of contention for outright honours, the RX-8 SP was undamaged in the incident and Rickards will make the most of its legendary reliability to climb back up the standings in the coming days. The Mazda2 of Andrew MacLean continued to show that the little hatch can challenge more powerful competitors and it is expected to continue mixing it up against the other Showroom competitors as the event continues.