MOTORSPORT - Oakden justifies seeding protest

Brendon Oakden narrowly pipped Kingsley Thompson to win an intriguing side battle in the Possum Bourne Rally held around Mystery Creek in Waikato.
The battle of the Northlanders was just a small part of the action that encompassed the WRC Repco Rally of New Zealand over the weekend.
For Oakden, however, while battling with Thompson was fun, he was on a mission to prove to organisers he was better than they originally believed.
Oakden was forced to protest his original seeding of 14th in the starting order and was eventually moved up to eighth place before the start of the one-day clubman's rally.
"That was where we wanted to be, we thought someone had cocked up and, in the end, they agreed with us and we proved we were right," Oakden said.
Oakden and sister co-driver Natasha felt vindicated with their day's driving over the six stages - finally finishing fourth in a strong field - one place in front of Thompson.
"He was ahead of me at lunchtime, but by the end of the day we'd passed him," he said.
Oakden's plan of taking it easy in the morning and pushing harder in the afternoon's Te Akau stages paid off and the siblings also ended the day with a class win in their Subaru.
"We must have gone all right because we moved up two places in the afternoon's two stages, because the road suited us better ... we might have done better but we ran out of tyres in the afternoon and things got a bit hairy."
Former New Zealand Rally Champion Glenn Smith won the race, with Ryan Burley second and Brad Ayling the other driver to beat the two Northlanders home in the field of 57 drivers.
It was a weekend of incident for Whangarei driver Ben Jagger and co-driver Ben Hawkins - their chances of winning the NZ section of the Ford Fiesta Sporting Trophy took a nosedive on the final stage on Saturday.
Competing in the New Zealand Rally championship, they started poorly on Friday by breaking a drive shaft, but at least there were no points at stake.
They were leading their class by 18 seconds after rejoining the rally on Saturday, including their main rival for the trophy Auckland's Patrick Malley, until disaster struck on the final stage.
They left the road on a bend and although they got back on the road they had lost their lead and finished well down on the overall standings.
Jagger said it was a bit of an up and down weekend with their performance on Sunday also blighted - this time by a puncture - but the pair remained optimistic they can finish the season with a better show in the final rally of the series in Nelson, this month.
Jagger said: "If Patrick has the kind of luck we had this weekend and doesn't finish in Nelson then we can still win it, but it's looking pretty tough for us but anything can happen.
"We've still enjoyed the weekend, it was a really big event and we've learned heaps over the last week that we've been down here, it's been a good week regardless."
The fourth Northland driver, Kirsty Nelson, also had mechanical problems with the centre-differential in her car, meaning she wasn't competitive in Saturday's NZRC.
Nelson didn't compete in the rally on Sunday with the car due to be crated and sent to Kuala Lumpur this week, for the Rally of Malaysia in October.