The Hindu : Sport / Racing : Motor : The heat is on Cody Crocker

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The heat is on Cody Crocker

R. Venkatnarayan

Weather to decide the performance of cars

Whangarei (New Zealand): The heat is on and Australia’s Cody Crocker, the winner of the Asia Pacific Rally Championship title in 2006 and 2007, knows it well.

Crocker, however, has not been able to win in New Zealand.

In his season debut in the Hella International Rally of Whangarei, which starts on Saturday, Crocker is clear of his goals.

“Points in the Asia Pacific Championship are the main priority. Having said that I am a racer and I don’t want to just take the APRC points and get beaten like last year.

“The battle last year was fantastic so I am expecting it to be fierce and I’d like to think we can come away on top this time,” he said.

After two rounds of the APRC at New Caledonia and Canberra, Dean Herridge of Cusco Racing is leading the Championship with 21 points, followed by Kutsuhiko Taguchi of Team MRF with 18 points.

Crocker, who took part only in Canberra, is third with 16 points.

With the temperature ranging between five and 15 degrees here, not just Crocker, but Taguchi and Scott Pedder too face the heat from the local drivers.

Optimistic

However, both the MRF drivers are optimistic after their tyre and car settings test early this week. And they aren’t losing sleep over local drivers.

Their objective is to get ahead of Crocker, with Pedder planning to play a supportive role.

Team MRF, which had skipped the New Zealand leg for the last two years, decided to strategically opt this time around due to the smooth and fast-flowing stages here which are suited to the Mitsubishi cars and the MRF ZG2 hard-compound tyre.

Twelve drivers will battle for points in the FIA-Asia Pacific Rally Championship with 18 vying in the New Zealand Rally Championship 2008 and 42 in the Clubmans event, taking the total competition to 72 cars.

There will be 31 international drivers participating.

The competitors will contest across 15 gravel stages covering 256 competitive kilometres.

There will be three Super Special Stages, each of 1.50km. But what will decide the fate of the prospective drivers will be two instalments of 79.56km on day one with no tyre change, stretching across four stages, the longest being 35.97km.

Effective hard-compound tyres will be the deciding factor.

The weather will decide the performance of the lead cars. If the weather is sunny during the rally, as has been forecast, and the roads are dry, then MRF cars may have an edge in front.

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