Rally New Zealand’s two Rising Stars – Whangarei’s Ben Jagger and Kerikeri’s Stephen Barker – came away from Rally Nelson with completely contrasting results.
While this year’s Rising Stars Development Award winner Ben Jagger had a weekend he would rather forget, the 2010 Scholarship recipient, Stephen Barker, achieved everything he set out to do in Nelson, the fourth round of the Vantage New Zealand Rally Championship.
Barker, aged 21, set the pace in the Group N (production) two-wheel-drive category as he piloted the Rising Stars-backed Ford Fiesta to a very credible 13th place overall, and extended his lead in the NZRC 2WD class.
In contrast, mechanical issues and regrettable errors meant Jagger had to retire on both days of the two-day forestry road event, and now the 20-year-old and his team are faced with a lot of work to get their Subaru ready for the season’s final round, Rally Wairarapa, in just three weeks time.
Barker started day one very strongly against main rival, last year’s Rising Stars Scholarship winner Ben Hunt, who was on home turf in Nelson. Barker set the pace in the 2WD category to win five of the six special stages to end the day with a winning margin of 33.7 seconds over Hunt.
Day two saw a far closer contest between Barker and Hunt, both young drivers pushing themselves and their matching Fiestas to the limit. Barker started a little slower but regained the category lead after stage two and battled all day against Hunt who managed to keep the margin to Barker to five seconds or less most of the day. Going into the final stage, the gap was just 3.5 seconds, but Barker won the stage with an 11.9 second advantage over Hunt to claim the day two victory and with it, maximum points.
“It has been a great weekend, we are very happy, especially to come back after the Whangarei result [where we hit a power pole on the first day],” said Barker. “Day two was a great battle to the end and now we are in a strong position heading to the final round at Wairarapa.”
Barker now has a 35-point lead in the 2WD championship and has moved to within 11 points of the lead in the junior championship, despite his 2WD Rising Stars-supported Ford Fiesta being up against more powerful four-wheel-drive rivals.
Jagger struggled from the first stage of day one. His team found a problem with the front differential and although parts were replaced, they weren’t to the same specification as the usual high performance components. Worse was to come for Jagger on stage two when his Seedforce Subaru slipped off the road, stopping less than metre away from fellow competitor Glenn Smith who had also come to grief on the same corner. With the Subaru heavily damaged and stuck, Jagger and co-driver Ben Hawkins were forced to retire for the day.
After a lot of work from the crew, Jagger restarted on Sunday. However the day’s second stage would again become his undoing and a bent lower arm meant Jagger was again forced to retire. Earning no points from either day, Jagger slips from second to fifth in the junior section of the Vantage New Zealand Rally Championship (NZRC).
“Obviously for us it has been a very disappointing weekend. We had high hopes coming in the Nelson event and now we’ve come away with nothing,” said Jagger. “With effectively only a two-week turn around we have a lot of work to do to ensure the car is ready to go again for Rally Wairarapa.”
Rally New Zealand’s Willard Martin comments: “Stephen has had a great result this weekend and while Ben had a disappointing result, that is part of the learning process. Now they both need to focus on strong results at the final round in Wairarapa and, in Stephen’s case, he has got a very good shot at the Group N 2WD championship title. Stephen’s standings in the junior driver championship have also improved and he’s just eleven points behind leader Sloan Cox with a total of 74 points available at the final round.”
Credit: Rally New Zealand.