Corsica a first for young Kiwis
While Kiwi World Rally Championship driver Hayden Paddon is not contesting this weekend’s round of the WRC calendar, Kiwi rally pairing Dave Holder and Jason Farmer make their debut at the Tour de Corse in the Junior World Rally Championship category.
This is their first ‘Rally of 10,000 corners’ as well as their first-ever tarmac rally. The pairing are competing in a Ford Fiesta R2 EcoBoost rally car, identical to 13 other JWRC crews, supplied and run by JWRC category managers M-Sport Poland.
While their first event, Rally Sweden, was a matter of surviving the rigours of snow and ice driving the target for this weekend is getting to the finish in one piece.
The challenge for all drivers are the tight and twisty mountain roads, bordered by a rock face on one side and a steep drop into the sea on the other. The asphalt can be rough and abrasive placing a high demand on tyres. Long 30km plus stages can mean high brake temperatures where any mistakes on the narrow roads will be punished heavily.
Meanwhile back at home, Hayden Paddon is preparing for Rally Otago, the opening round of the NZ Rally Championship that gets underway in a week’s time.
Holder plans to be back in NZ for the event, this time in the codriver’s seat, alongside Southland’s Scott O’Donnell competing in a rear-wheel drive Toyota Corolla DX.
Cassidy starts title defence Nick Cassidy along with codriver Ryo Hirakawa will begin the defence of their 2017 Super GT Series title at the Okayama circuit in Japan this weekend.
Cassidy says this season is potentially going to be very tough with less than a second covering the top ten cars in recent testing.
Among his rivals will be former Formula One drivers Jensen Button, Heikki Kovalainen, Kazuki Nakajima and Kami Kobayashi.
The latter two both drive for Toyota in the World Endurance Championship. Cassidy’s goal for this weekend is to finish on the podium.
Van Gisbergen aims to extend Supercars lead
Symmons Plains hosts the third round of the Australian Supercars Championship over the weekend in Tasmania.
Current leader on points, Shane van Gisbergen, is confident that his Red Bull Holden Racing team has sorted out his handling problems that plagued him in the second round two weeks ago at the Australian F1 Grand Prix event.
The Adelaide 500 winner had what could be described as an average round in Melbourne but holds a 49-point lead over Erebus Racing’s David Reynolds with fellow Kiwi Scott McLaughlin in third.
Van Gisbergen won the opening race in Tasmania last season but it was a race where no championship points were awarded following a massive pile-up in the opening laps that eliminated 11 cars. Only four laps were eventually completed due to time restrictions.
Fabian Coulthard, currently sitting tenth in the championship, also won last year at Symmons Plains breaking a 13 straight Holden winning streak at the circuit.