Positive Finish to Season the Aim for van Klink

Positive Finish to Season the Aim for van Klink

Christchurch’s Marcus van Klink heads to the final round of the Brian Green Property Group New Zealand Rally Championship, Rally New Zealand, looking for a positive finish to a trying season.

Debuting the hugely popular Buteline Mazda RX-8 fitted with a 20B triple rotor engine, van Klink suffered new car teething issues, but was able to take the new car to victory at the penultimate round, Rally Waitomo after a trouble-free run.

With some of the fast, flowing roads on offer around the Waikato area, van Klink is confident he and co-driver Dave Neill can repeat their victory this weekend at the series finale.

Day two will offer up a new challenge for the pair, with stages they have never contested before including Manawahe, which passes through the infamous Helicopter Corner.

“The roads one day one are pretty awesome and the Buteline Mazda loves big wide flowing roads so I’m really looking to getting out there,” says van Klink.

“Day two will be pretty interesting on some new stages, we haven’t heard a heap about them but it should be some fun. Really, it’ll just be nice if we can have a trouble-free run to finish off the season, it’s been a challenging season but it’d be nice to finish off on a high note.”

Rally New Zealand gets underway with a ceremonial start on The Strand in Tauranga on Friday from 5pm, with the action getting underway from Raglan the following morning. Crews will tackle six special stages totalling 146 kilometres of special stages, before returning to Tauranga overnight. The following day, crews will tackle a further six stages and 80 kilometres before the finish at ASB Baypark Stadium from 4pm.

ENDS

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