Celtic Motorsports fought off stiff competition in the final ARC round.

November is a month Charlie Drake won’t forget any time soon.

The 32-year-old Millstreet man took home the Australian Rally Championships Premier League title last weekend, after two battling stages in Victoria.

The win comes just days before Drake is set to marry to his Australian fianceé Narelle, on Saturday, November 19.

He is still coming to terms with the racing triumph.

“It probably hasn’t fully sank in yet,” he told the Irish Echo by phone, amid a flurry of wedding preparations.

“But there is a lot of rally drivers in Australia so to be the Privateer Australian rally champion is a bit surreal. We only started rallying a couple of years ago and to get up to pace as quick as we did is pretty unreal,” he said.

The Privateer Championship is for competitors who compete without big, corporate backers. The participating teams face a number of restrictions while competing, having to place restrictors on their turbos and use a set number of fuel-types and tyres.

There were three teams in contention for the title and Drake’s team, Celtic Motorsports, faced a stiff challenge as they prepared for the decisive race.

Celtic Motorsports were three points behind going into the rally and needed to win both of their heats in Warragul, Victoria, to take the 2011 title.

Drake’s father, who had travelled to Australia for the impending wedding, was there to witness his son’s title triumph.

It was no easy drive in the Mitsubushi Evo, explains Drake.

“Saturday was a pretty ding-dong battle. I had a spin on stage two and lost a bit of time and I made an error with tyre choice as well so that cost us a bit of time,” he said.

The team’s recovery from two DNFs – basically, failures to finish caused by mechanical errors – in Queensland and Western Australia at the start of the season were a turning point in the season, said Drake.

The Corkman said securing the services of navigator Ben Atkinson was another fillip. Atkinson’s brother, Chris, has driven for the Subaru team in World Rally Championships.

“Our pace just picked up immediately and I think getting him in the car beside me … that just brought our speed up,” says Drake.

:: Secret of success

Drake says his team performed to the very best of their abilities.

“All year we’ve consistently been the fastest, restricted, turbo-charged car in Australia. With the car and the machinery we had, we couldn’t have gone faster all year.”

He reserves his biggest praise for fianceé, Narelle. The Sydneysider has supported him every step of the way, looking after their three children while he raced.

“I’ve spent weeks away all over the country rallying and we’ve got a family there. She’s after looking after the kids and definitely without her support, especially this weekend, everything was put on the long finger as regards preparations for the wedding. She’s done 99 per cent of the work for the wedding,” he says.

“And even the inherent danger of rallying, to be competing at such an important rally at high speeds a week out from the wedding, I think she’s been pretty cool and amazing to support me this year,” he said. The pair will wed at Narrawallee, Mollymook, on the New South Wales south coast.