Ben Hunt's Charge In The Škoda Fabia R5
Škoda New Zealand supported driver, Ben Hunt, didn’t let a puncture slow him down at the Rally of South Canterbury.
Jun 23, 2022
Ben Hunt is sitting second in the NZ Rally Championship, remarkably after just 5 days rally experience in his new ŠKODA FABIA R5.
It’s been another strong second-place finish for Ben Hunt in his new ŠKODA FABIA R5 rally car at the weekend’s Rally of South Canterbury.
The ŠKODA New Zealand supported driver showed his mettle after a puncture eroded a well earned time buffer ahead of Ari Pettigrew, the Nelson-born driver recovering to retain his podium position.
“We had to push hard to put the gap between 2nd and 3rd, you can lose a rally as quickly as win it in those situations but the ŠKODA FABIA R5 gave me plenty of confidence to attack that bit harder,”
“Considering we still only have 5 days rallying in the car, I think we showed some awesome pace. I’m more confident with the car every rally, but there’s always room to improve. I’m still learning some characteristics of the car and we have no past set up information from previous years, so just extracting those extra seconds from fine tuning will take a little time. But honestly, the transition to the ŠKODA FABIA R5 has gone very well so far. It’s a great car to position and it has great road speed through corners.” Hunt continued.
With the Rally of Far North just a couple of weeks out and just 100 days to the international Rally of New Zealand it is very much eyes forward for Hunt and co-driver Tony Rawstorne.
The roads in the Far North and in the International Rally will have similarities to the Rally of Whangārei where Hunt also came second earlier in the year. Hunt is looking forward to validating some of the learnings the team made on those roads and hopefully achieving a strong result for the international Rally of New Zealand.
“The R5 specification car is obviously not the same level of performance as a WRC 1 car, but I am looking forward to benchmarking the ŠKODA FABIA R5 against the international R5 drivers.”