Nicholas Clarke

Three-time British Ral­ly Cham­pi­on Mark Hig­gins and for­mer World Ral­ly Cham­pi­on, co-dri­ver Nick Grist will join forces to com­pete in the 10th edi­tion of the Ral­ly Trinidad rac­ing fes­ti­val which will take place at var­i­ous venues in T&T from March 25-29.

This was an­nounced dur­ing a press con­fer­ence at NP's head of­fice in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day. In all 40 cars from 12 re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al teams will take part in the event, mak­ing it the largest ral­ly in T&T his­to­ry. Hig­gins, who was a stunt dri­ver in the James Bond film Quan­tum of So­lace, will sit in the dri­ver's seat of a Grp N Mit­subishi Evo IX while Grist, a for­mer part­ner of ral­ly leg­end Col­in McRae MBE, calls notes for him. They will face com­pe­ti­tion from lo­cals Ains­ley Lochan, the de­fend­ing cham­pi­on, and John Pow­ell, who placed third over­all in Ral­ly Ja­maica in De­cem­ber in his WRC Sub­aru S12B.

The re­gion­al chal­lengers will in­clude top Ba­jan Dri­ver Paul Bourne, his coun­try­man Ian War­ren in his Suzu­ki Swift, the fastest 2WD car in the Caribbean, St Vin­cent's num­ber one Steve Ol­liviere and Ja­maica's top 2WD Bob­by Mar­shall. For the first time in T&T there will be a ful­ly sub­scribed class (3) of world ral­ly Car spec ve­hi­cles as well as a clas­sic Ford Es­cort Mi­ki com­ing in from Bar­ba­dos. Ad­mis­sion will be free at each event. Spon­sors in­clude the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, NP Ul­tra, Stag, trop­i­cal pow­er Lim­it­ed, Il­lu­mi­nati, Dasani, Full Throt­tle, Sea Board, Sea Freight while the of­fi­cial ra­dio part­ner is 95.1 FM.