SA rally champ heads to WRC Britain

Jan Habig in his S2000 Ford Fiesta on a very wet VW Rally earlier this year - which gives you a good idea of what conditions are likely to be like on the notoriously muddy Wales Rally GB.

Jan Habig in his S2000 Ford Fiesta on a very wet VW Rally earlier this year - which gives you a good idea of what conditions are likely to be like on the notoriously muddy Wales Rally GB.

Published Sep 6, 2012

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Multiple South African Rally Champion, Jan Habig, will be partnered in the Wales Rally Great Britain, Round 10 of the World Rally Championship from 13-16 September, in an M-Sport Ford Fiesta RS WRC, by British navigator Robbie Durant.

Durant, 32, from Oxfordshire, is not only a full-time professional rally navigator - he reads the pace notes for Harry Hunt in the Intercontinental Rally Championship and has also navigated in six WRC rallies and a number of top rallies in the US - he's also a motorsport electronics/electrical engineer, currently contracted to the Red Bull Formula 1 team as an electronics engineer.

Habig will be competing the Wales Rally GB 18 years after he and his then navigator Douglas Judd entered this rally in a Ford Escort that Habig had built and prepared himself - and found themselves teamed with rally great Ari Vatanen and his star navigator Tina Thörner.

FIRST RUN IN 1932

The 1994 Rally GB was won by rally icon Colin McCrae, but Habig and Judd startled the rally world by finishing eighth, behind seven works entries - and ahead of several others!

The Rally GB was first run in 1932 and is one of the oldest rallies still running in the world, with a list of winners that reads like a who's who of rallying. It's also one of only two (along with the Rally Finland) that have been part of the World Rally Championship since its inception in 1973.

This year's Wales Rally will start in Llandudno on the Wales North Coast and finish in Cardiff Bay, after 21 special stages totalling about 400 stage kilometres.

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