Wishes fulfilled on return
IT’S good to be back after a monthlong holiday from Drivesouth editorial duties, and especially so as all three of the ‘‘dreams’’ I was hoping for when I signed off on my last editorial at the end of August have come to pass.
To recap, as I had hoped, we now have a genuine homegrown Otago motorsport world champion in Courtney Duncan. Her achievement in winning the Women’s World Motocross Championship should put her in the running for recognition for high honours in both our regional and national sporting awards when the time comes.
And yes, Scott McLaughlin did indeed extend his record run of wins in the Australian V8 Supercars in my absence, taking victory in the second of the two Pukekohe sprint races. He’s now won 17 of the 24 V8 supercar races held so far this year. The most exciting race on the V8 Supercars calendar, the Bathurst 1000, takes place next weekend. It’s a race McLaughlin has yet to win in his V8 supercar career.
Last and not least, Hayden Paddon did, as I had wished for, secure drives in two of the three remaining world rally championship rounds of the season. The first of those drives — at this weekend’s Wales Rally GB — is in a ‘‘tier 2’’ WRC Pro category Ford Fiesta R5, and will provide an opportunity for Paddon to settle into the WRC groove before stepping up to a fullspec Fiesta for Rally Australia next month.
Paddon has made it clear that he is seeking to return to a much fuller WRC programme in 2020, and his determination to do so will be stronger than ever now that Rally New Zealand has been confirmed as a round of next year’s championship.
While having Rally NZ back in the championship for the first time since 2012 is great news for fans in this country, it is part of a wider set of changes that sees the return of a round in Japan (for the first time since 2010) and Kenya (for the first time since 2002). This gives the series a much more global feel, with two of the three events dropped to make way for the new events coming from
Europe.