Malley takes commanding lead from opening round
After a dramatic opening round of the New Zealand Fiesta SportingTrophy, Auckland’s Patrick Malley has taken a commanding 40-point lead over Northland’s Ben Jagger.
The season started badly for 18-year-old Jagger, three kilometers into the first stage he spun off the road and got stuck, causing his retirement from the opening leg. This left just two competitors to contest the remainder of the leg, Malley and Chris Lange. While Lange looked after his tyres Malley pushed on and took a 27 second lead going into the first service at Pongaroa.
Stage 4, the longest of the event at 35 kilometers changed the Rally for the Fiesta SportingTrophy. Lange pushed hard and caught the dust of Bert
Murray’s Mazda RX-7, which caused him to misjudge a corner and he left the road. Although the time lost was minimal and absolutely no cosmetic damage, the incident caused a lot of mechanical damage and the crew were forced to retire at the end of the stage.
This left Malley to conserve his tyres for the second day, however due to this he dropped from a close second to third in the overall two-wheel drive series.
Day two saw the Jagger car restarting however the damage suffered by the Lange car was to significant to repair overnight, the car on it’s way back to it’s southland base before the second leg even began.
Due to his road position, Jagger struggled with dust from an ailing Reg Cook and the classic Ford Escort of Greg Poole, however he did manage to get a close a 0.6 of a second to Malley in the opening stage of the day.
Malley’s final winning margin for the leg was a comfortable 2 minutes 20 seconds. A maximum points haul for he and experienced co-driver ‘Crunch’ Bennett puts them on 67 points, 40 clear of Jagger and Ben Hawkins of 27, with Chris Lange and Mal Peden scoring no points at the opening round.