Young Gun Jagger To Turn Pace into Points

A tough start to the New Zealand Ford Fiesta Sporting Trophy at the Rally of Wairarapa has eighteen year old Ben Jagger determined to sink his teeth into Round 2 in Otago and turn his proven pace into some much needed championship points.

After suffering light damage in the first stage of the opening round last month in Masterton, Jagger and co-driver Ben Hawkins were forced to sit out the entire first day of the rally and only picked up points when re-entering the competition on Sunday.

On Sunday morning the Northland pair showed their pace was up to par with Fiesta points leader Patrick Malley before they ran into trouble with lack of visability in the dry and dusty conditions. After Saturday's DNF Jagger was placed down the starting order at the back of the field amongst the slower contenders where he was inevitably catching the slower cars and consequently battling through the dust clouds thrown up by them.

The dusty conditions were in fact causing grief for many drivers even those placed near the front. There were some who were becoming frustrated with a starting gap of only one minute between cars which was causing problems with driving through thick dust.

At the end of the Rally of Wairarapa Ben Jagger sits in second place in the Group N Two Wheel Drive championship behind Patrick Malley with 29 points to his 67 . The third Group N Ford Fiesta driver Chris Lange had a tough opening round leaving with no points on the board.

The three Ford Fiesta drivers are also competing within the Kiwi 2 championship against more powerful two wheel drive cars. In K2 the Fiesta drivers with their 1600cc engines are disadvantaged against some of the two litre cars. In Kiwi 2 Jagger sits in fifth place after Round One.

"Against those more powerful cars like Dave Strong's and Aaron Cook's, who are running two litre V-Tec engines, we are a bit disadvantaged. On some of those straights they are getting up to 200kph but we are only getting around 160." says Jagger.

Going into the Rally of Otago Ben Jagger is confident of a vast improvement on Wairarapa. Although he has never driven a rally in the South Island before, especially one where there is a possiblity of snowy conditions similar to last year, he knows he has not shown his full potential yet in the championship.

"We have no special tactics for the weekend exactly and will simply head down and do the best we possibly can. It's snowing down there at the moment and I've never even been to the snow before... I have never even been to the South Island before!" said Jagger.

"I don't think we will have any trouble getting the hang of the conditions down there and putting in some good times." he says.

The Rally of Otago is based in Dunedin with an opening ceremony on Friday and all drivers in the Group N Four Wheel drive, Group N Two Wheel drive and Kiwi 2 competing six stages on Saturday and a further five on Sunday.

NZ Rally Championship Calendar 2008

Round 2
10-11 May Rally of Otago

Round 3
06-08 June Rally of Whangarei Asia Pacific Rally Championship

Round 4
26-27 July Rally of Hawkes Bay

Round 5
28-31 August Rally New Zealand World Rally Championship (Hamilton)

Round 6
20-21 September Rally Nelson