Rotorua's Dean Sumner and Sloan Cox will be racing against some of the world's best rally drivers as they compete in this weekend's International Rally of Whangarei.
The rally has a 76-strong field across three main categories - the Asia Pacific Rally Championship, Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship (NZRC) and Clubmans teams.
Sumner, last year's New Zealand champion and Cox, last year's junior New Zealand champion, will hope to finish each stage as high up the ladder as possible. They'll face stiff competition from the likes of Hayden Paddon, who leads this year's New Zealand competition and who is also vying for valuable points in the APRC. The field of 76 is the largest so far at this rally.
It is the fourth of five rounds in the 2011 Brian Green Property Group NZ Rally Championship (NZRC), in association with Neil Allport Motorsports. It is also the fourth round of the FIA APRC and will cover 301.9 competitive kilometres on roads through the Kaipara and Whangarei districts.
For the 24 teams competing in the domestic series it offers the opportunity to match their talents against several world-class rivals. The Whangarei event has been won by Kiwis for the past four years - Geraldine's Paddon three times and Christchurch's Chris West once.
Seven New Zealand teams can potentially earn points for APRC teams or, as wildcard entrants, for themselves in the prestigious APRC.
Cox Motorsport, with Sloan Cox as driver and sister Tarryn co-driver, were seeded 10th after receiving a wildcard in this year's rally. They have a few improvements to their Mitsubishi Evo X after Rally Wairarapa, including a PPG dogbox to replace the standard gearbox.
"Because we've got a wildcard entry we're going to mix it with the international competitors, hopefully we'll get some publicity overseas," Tarryn said.
"We'd love another podium but with the international competitors it's a big step up, we'll see how it goes. We've done a few upgrades on the car since the last event and it's going to make a huge difference. We've been testing and we're really happy [with the car].
She said they would use her recent trip to the Elite Motorsport Academy as motivation for the rally. She would be applying the mental skills training they learned to get them through. Sloan graduated from the academy in 2008 and Tarryn's attendance had helped refresh his memory.
Paddon is the man to beat - for both outright honours and maximum NZRC points. Paddon took a clean-sweep in the first two NZRC rounds earlier this year, but missed round three in Wairarapa, being away successfully winning his second Production World Rally Championship event overseas. The popular driver has a 46 point deficit to current NZRC series leader Richard Mason and says the goal this weekend is to win - not just to score points, but to seek continual improvements in his own performance as well.
Expected to start further down the order, defending series champion Sumner and West can either benefit or be handicapped by their position, depending on the weather.
New Zealand Rally Championship: Richard Mason, Masterton, 302 points 1, Hayden Paddon, Geraldine, 256 2, Emma Gilmour, Dunedin, 239 3, Dean Sumner, Rotorua, 228 4, Chris West, Timaru, 191 5, Glenn Inkster, Howick, 185 6, Sloan Cox, Rotorua, 161 7, Ben Hunt, Nelson, 151 8, Ben Jagger, Whangarei, 133 9, Josh Marston, Christchurch, 129 10.
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