Queenstown driver Caleb Macdonald will be one of the leading lights in this year’s Barry Robinson Memorial Wyndham Rally on Saturday (2 August) both as a competitor and a sponsor.
At the wheel of his Mitsubishi EVO 6 Macdonald finished third in the 2023 event and was in a three-way battle for the lead in last year’s rally when a tyre came off the bead in the fourth Special Stage. “That’s motorsport,” said Macdonald recently as he spoke of last year’s event. “It was a fun day, we enjoyed it, but it was an unfortunate end.”
This year he is back and will be one of the favourites for success in the EVO 6. Macdonald’s main mission this season is the New Zealand Rally Challenge Championship and while Wyndham is not a round of the championship it comes during a mid-season break in that competition and as Macdonald says, “it is a good opportunity for seat time and it is a home event for me being that I come from Gore.”
As a Special Stage sponsor through his business Macdonald Perniskie Chartered Accountants, Caleb says, “if we can help in some little way it is great to put back into a sport that I have got so much out of. Roger Laird and his team do a fantastic job.”
After Wyndham, Macdonald’s focus will return to the Rally Challenge Championship which he currently leads. Last year he was prominent early on but had issues at the North Island rounds. “You can go from hero to zero quite quickly,” he says. “When it goes well that is what makes this sport so great. It is a marathon just to get to the finish let alone win in rallying. It was a pretty good season and we learnt a lot last year. I have not been driving a 4wd car for very long and we learnt a lot, event by event.”
Australian Larissa Biggar is Macdonald’s co-driver and as he chased success last year he credited her with assisting with his development as a driver.
Given a trouble-free run at Wyndham this year expect Macdonald to be a big factor in the rally.
The Barry Robinson Memorial Wyndham Rally will be centred on the township of Wyndham, 45 kilometres east of Invercargill and 25km south of Gore. It will start at the MLT Three Rivers Hotel in Redan Street, Wyndham at 9.00am on Saturday 2 August from where competitors will tackle six Special Stages before the event ends back at the MLT Three Rivers Hotel in Wyndham with the first car due at 3.30pm.
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