The Mountain Rally, directed once again by Monty Suffern for the Swinburne Car Club, was held on August 9.
VRC Round 5 – Martini Mountain Rally to Portman
In their second outing in a VRC round for 1980, Geoff Portman and Phil Rainer made it two from two, this time in a Datsun Stanza, again sponsored by Autosport. In a a masterly performance, Portman won all ten stages to win by more than 10 minutes!
In a fine drive, Shane Blandford placed second with navigator Ron Harper in their Datsun 1600. Bob Watson took the Peugeot 504 turbo into an excellent third place.
Series favourites Smith/Paterson and Brown/Brown both struck problems and scored no points so that after five rounds the championship was finely balanced with only two points separating Brown, Portman and Smith.
