Motorsport: Watch out for West's return

Former champion rally driver Chris West, in his Subaru Impreza, is confident he'll catch up.

Chris West hopes to get his national rally championship campaign back on track at next weekend's Whangarei-based event.

After problems at the Rotorua event, West, the 2004 national champion, slipped to sixth in the points standings in his Subaru Impreza WRX STI.

"We just want to be as competitive as possible and get a good result," West said. And the former Timaru man is heading north in the right frame of mind. "Some of those stages I've done virtually every year since 1998 in the international rally.

"I really enjoy the roads and we've got really good pace notes for them."

Despite coming away from the second round of the series at Rotorua with no points, West is confident the Subaru New Zealand Rally Team car is in the right shape to produce a top performance.

"We had a good test session last week," he said.

"We got the car set-up competitive at Rotorua just before we had our dramas.

"The test confirmed we were heading in the right direction and we've gone beyond that as well."

West said he is pretty relaxed about the weekend. "I just want to enjoy going as fast as possible."

And he is not too concerned about the controversial 5km rally sprint on Sunday, which will carry just as many championship points as Saturday's 170km of special stages.

"The last couple of seasons have been very competitive so we've had to drive every stage flat out just like it was a rally sprint. The only difference with a proper rally sprint over a short distance is that one mistake is going to knock you out of contention."

West said that in a normal rally, the time lost in a half-spin could usually be made up as the event progressed. "We'll just have to try to be more focused than ever to avoid making even little mistakes.

With co-driver Garry Cowan, West has been seeded second for Saturday's seven stages, a total of 175km.

On Sunday, the fastest eight cars will go forward to the elimination rounds of the rally sprint after four qualifying runs.

Then the slowest half of the field will be eliminated after each knockout round, leaving two drivers to contest the final.