Toyota Rally Team

Over the past few years Toyota Team Racing has made enormous progress in the Australian Rally Championship, highlighted by a superb third place to Simon and Sue Evans in the last two seasons with the team.

In 2005 all three TTR Corolla Sportivos finished the season in the top ten, with Neal Bates and Coral Taylor in sixth place and young development driver Ben Barker and co-driver Damien Long in eighth.

Neal Bates and Coral Taylor

Neal Bates is widely regarded as one of the most talented drivers in Australian motor sport – and has a trophy cabinet that proves that he has not wasted his natural ability.

The 2003 season marked the 10th anniversary of an extraordinary in-car relationship with co-driver Coral Taylor. The pair came together in 1993 to win the ARC Championship in their first season together and their partnership has been the most successful and enduring in Australian motorsport.

Further titles in 1994 and 1995 made Neal and Coral the undisputed king and queen of the sport and they remain unchallenged as the most successful Australian-born pairing in the ARC. As well as the three successive ARC titles, Bates-Taylor finished runner-up five times in the six years from 1996-2001, took outright victory in the 1995 Targa Tasmania road race with a Celica GT-Four and won their class another three times in a Lexus IS200.

Bates took an enforced break in 2002 to build and develop a new Toyota Corolla Group N Prototype. The successful partnership with Taylor was restored in 2003 with the formation of Toyota Team Racing, running a pair of Corolla Sportivos under the new Group N (Prototype) regulations. Developing the new cars as he went, Neal & Coral finished the championship in eighth place and underlined their ability with six Super Special stage wins.

2004 brought an additional challenge for Coral, who became responsible for the year-round co-ordination of the rally team's complex logistics. They finished the year in sixth place.

In 2005 Bates and Taylor continued to improve the Corolla Sportivo and the highlight of the year was Rally SA when the pair won the opening heat and finished second overall. They finished sixth in the championship.

Simon and Sue Evans

Simon and Sue Evans are the public favourites of Australian rallying and the likeable larrikins have also established themselves as one of the fastest crews in the country. After struggling financially to get their private entry on the road in recent years, the husband and wife team received a chance to join Toyota Team Racing alongside Neal Bates and Coral Taylor in 2004.

Simon and Sue, who were born just three days apart, were high school sweethearts and married in 1995 at the age of 23. Sue's father raced speedway and Simon's father was into rallying, so it was no surprise that the two ventured into motorsport in 1991 – both as drivers initially. Sue, however, crashed her Datsun on her very first event and after a number of years supporting Simon from the sidelines, became Simon's co-driver in 1999.

Despite a fraught start when Sue was rendered speechless for the first four stages of their first event together – they enjoyed a giant-killing couple of seasons in a F2 VW Golf, winning their class in the 1999 ARC and the 2000 Asia-Pacific Championship.

With the loss of factory support for their team in 2001, Simon's father, Peter, stepped in and provided the first of a series of Impreza WRXs that they ran privately, but always very quickly. After going through financial torture to keep competing, including selling the family home and Sue's car in recent years, the Simon and Sue enjoyed the support of Toyota in 2004 and were rewarded with third place in the championships - the top Toyota team.

Last year the husband and wife combination recorded three podium finishes and was again rewarded with third place in the championship.