Campbell To Defend Title As Hawkeswood Mining North Island Rally Series Gets Underway
Also doubling as the third round of the Newstead Lodge Northern Rallysprint Series, the one-day event is known for its high speed, cresty gravel road and has been compared to the 1000 Lakes stages at WRC Finland and is not for the faint hearted.
Campbell will be under pressure right from the start with Quentin Palmer competing in his new Skoda Fabia Evo2. Palmer finished runner up to Campbell last year driving a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 5. Also making a return is Charlie Evans in his Mazda RX7. Last season Evans won the Class D (2WD 2001 and over) title in a Honda Civic from Dave Strong (Honda Jazz) who also lines up this Sunday in a Ford Fiesta S2000.
Local hot shot Ben Huband will be keen to keep the front runners honest in his Subaru Impreza whilst talented young rookie Alex Johnstone will be competing in his first ever rallysprint in his Mazda 323 GTX.
'We have a great variety of pilots and machinery lined up for this exciting Event' said NIRS coordinator Marty Roestenburg 'Bradley Stewart and William Menzies are making the big haul North all the way from Dannevirke to compete'
The Ruarangi Rd, Mangapai Rallysprint (South of Whangarei) comprises approximately 7.0km of ridge top gravel road run in a South to North anticlockwise direction. The event gets underway at 10am with a familiarisation run for the field of 40 cars. Competitors will then have up to four timed runs and the fastest two cars in each class will have a fifth run to determine the class winners as per the Northern Rallysprint series Rules and Regulations.
The NIRS competitors times over the four runs will be cumulative and they must retain the same co-driver throughout the competition to qualify for points.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scoop
14-07-2025
- Scoop
Palmer Cleans Up The Taranaki Tarmac Rally; Increases Lead In NI Rally Series
Quentin Palmer (Skoda Fabia Rally2 Evo) continued to stamp his mark on the 2025 Hawkeswood Mining North Island Rally Series (NIRS) after winning every stage of the SBT Group Taranaki Tarmac one-day rally held on Saturday and taking overall victory. Second NIRS competitor home was William Menzies/Doug Dolan (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 6) ahead of Bradley Stewart/Oliver Drake (Subaru Impreza). 'Definitely thrilled to take the win,' commented Palmer. 'With Cameron (Ross) and David (Rogers) as (overall) favourites I didn't expect to do well, so was surprised to find I won the opening stage ahead of them.' With two Special Stages cancelled (SS 3 and 4) Palmer and co-driver Dayna Kiekebosch went on to win all seven other competitive stages finishing 1min 34 sec ahead of Marcus van Klink/Matt Richards (Mazda RX8). Competing in his first tarmac rally, Menzies came home a solid second in the NIRS standings and third overall. He was also awarded the 'Driver of the Day' trophy. 'I wasn't sure what to expect,' said Menzies. 'It was completely different as my car is set up quite tight for gravel. I was on rally tyres which worked out in the end. I heard rain falling in the middle of the night so was confident it was going to work. 'There were a couple of dry stages where the car was moving around. Other than that, it felt great as it was quite wet at times, so it worked out. Thrilled with the result and really encouraged by it.' The competition for the final podium position was close between Stewart and Charlie Evans (Mazda RX7). The latter was holding on to third until he suffered a rally-ending mechanical with one Special Stage to complete, handing the place to Stewart. Fourth were Chris Ramsay/Amy Hudson (Toyota Corolla APR2) ahead of Ben Huband/Corinne Watson (Subaru Impreza). The SBT Group Taranaki Tarmac Rally incorporated the second round of the NIRS which saw Palmer extend his lead to 34-points over Huband and Menzies who sit second equal with Dave Strong in fourth followed by Stewart and Phil Campbell. 'We must have got the (tarmac) setup right,' said Palmer who moved up to the Skoda Fabia Rally2 car this season. 'We got some good advice heading into the rally and I'm feeling more comfortable in the car, although there is plenty more to learn. It is my first rally win so thrilled to have achieved that.' In the Class results, John Whooley (Honda Civic) has extended his lead in Class C (2WD 1601-2000) while in Class D (2WD 2001 and over), Charlie Evans' (Mazda RX7) retirement saw Ramsay take maximum points while Jeff Torkington (Toyota MR2) retains his lead. In the Classic Class E, 18-year-old novice and recipient of the RallyDrive New Zealand full day testing voucher, Kyle Percival (Ford Escort Mk2), also extends his lead over Nick Flanagan. Palmer continues to lead Class F (4WD 1601-2000) while Ben Huband (Subaru Impreza) has had his lead narrowed to just three-points over Menzies in Class G (4WD 2001 and over). Bradley Stewart (Subaru Impreza) moves to 13-points ahead of Chris Burke in Class I (4WD Pre 1996). Both drivers and teams take a break before the third round of the Hawkeswood Mining North Island Rally Series on 23 August 2025 at Rally Coromandel.
Scoop
06-07-2025
- Scoop
Taranaki Tarmac Rally To Be Hotly Contested By NI Rally Series Competitors
The SBT Group Taranaki Tarmac one-day rally takes place this Saturday 12 July 2025 with the rivalry amongst the 2025 Hawkeswood Mining North Island Rally Series (NIRS) competitors expected to step up a notch. The question to be answered after nine Special Stages is 'Will this be a year a rally car beats a Targa spec car?' Quentin Palmer (Skoda Fabia Rally2 Evo) stamped his mark on the 2025 NIRS season after taking first round honours in early May winning the Ruarangi Rd Rallysprint. It was his first outing in his new Skoda, and he beat home last season's champion Phil Campbell (Ford Fiesta AP4). "Taranaki will be interesting for us," commented Palmer. "Our car originally came into NZ as a tarmac car before being converted to gravel spec. I definitely have to do some tarmac practice, and we have a lot of setup changes to make.' However, traditionally the Taranaki Tarmac Rally has been the domain of bitumen specialists and last year's winner Cameron Ross/Matthew Buer (Subaru Impreza) is seeded first and will be hard to beat as will second seed David Rogers (Mitsubishi Evo 10). Also making an appearance in the North Island and not to be discounted is Marcus van Klink (Mazda RX8) who will start third on the road ahead of Palmer. The rally comprises 204kms of Touring Stags and nine Special Stages totalling 124kms with four of them being repeated. As per MotorSport NZ Tarmac Rally requirements this event runs with 200 Kilometer per hour speed limit. The new route includes the infamous tunnels and the spectacular Inglewood yumps. Co-Chairman Sean Bryce said 'The Rally Committee are excited about the new route and location of this years Rally and hope this Event will go down well with the residents, local community and the competitors' Missing from the start list is last season's NIRS champion Phil Campbell (Ford Fiesta AP4). Current Class C (2WD 1601-2000) leader, John Whooley (Honda Civic) will look to extend his lead while in Class D (2WD 2001 and over), Charlie Evans (Mazda RX7) resumes his battle with Jeff Torkington (Toyota MR2). In the Classic Class E, Kyle Percival (Ford Escort Mk2) will have his hands full. Palmer will want to extend his lead in Class F (4WD 1601-2000) as will Ben Hubbard (Subaru Impreza) in Class G (4WD 2001 and over) and Bradley Stewart (Subaru Impreza) in Class I (4WD Pre 1996). Scholarship recipients (with a discounted entry fee) are first time rookies young Samuel and Matthew Broadbent (Mitsubishi Evo) from Ngatea who have been showing fast pace at recent Rallysprints. The Clubman's and National Rally is promoted by the Taranaki Car Club in conjunction with the South Taranaki Car Club, and will take place in the New Plymouth and North Taranaki regions. The first car gets away from the Plymouth International Hotel at 07.00 hours, starting Special Stage 1 at 07.30hrs, returning at approximately 16.00 hours to the Plymouth for the champagne finish and after match meal and prizegiving.
Newsroom
04-07-2025
- Newsroom
From sandpit to sand court, she's changing volleyball
Before she was guiding elite volleyball athletes, Colleen Campbell was wrangling toddlers. Now, as Volleyball New Zealand's high performance manager, she's discovering surprising similarities between the two worlds. Straight out of high school, Campbell studied early childhood education and went on to manage a string of early learning centres – experience she now sees as comparable to high performance sport. 'They're both unpredictable. Fast paced. To work in them, you need to be present and engaged, a really good problem solver with quick reactions. And where it's really at is time spent with the children, or with the athletes,' she says. 'Their learning environments are about error, mistake, learning. How do we build an understanding of the person and their learning style? What are their needs we have to meet? And it's also around trust and a sense of security and belonging.' An educator and people developer at heart, Campbell is driving organisational change in the sport she loves. As well as taking care of the needs of athletes and coaches, Campbell is helping emerging female coaches enter the high performance space and learn on the job, from both their successes and failures. Antonia Harrison coaches Jay Huggins at a Volleyball NZ beach camp. Photo: Thomas Hamill Photography Antonia Harrison is one of those women. Returning home from playing and coaching at a US university, Antonia joined Volleyball NZ in 2024 through High Performance Sport New Zealand, and the Women in High Performance Sport Residency Experience programme. Now the New Zealand A beach volleyball head coach, she says she owes a lot to Campbell, who's built a scaffolding of support around her. 'Colleen's the glue in our sport. Behind the scenes, she does so much for our sport and our people so we can focus on coaching the athletes,' Harrison says. 'Her goal is to leave the sport in a better place, and she's doing that so well.' In a small, nimble sport that's thinking outside the square, Campbell has also established a women's working group. Groundbreaking in the sport, it's giving women a forum where they can speak openly and feel supported. 'They are the voice of change,' says Campbell, now on the empowerment commission for international volleyball body FIVB. 'You have to think about the little girls out there who, in 20 years' time work for Volleyball New Zealand, and it's a kick-ass environment because of the change that's happening now. If this is good for women, this is going to be good for society. 'Volleyball is a sport that's growing massively, and I feel really privileged to be in the position I'm in.' Colleen Campbell has a long history in coaching both indoor and beach volleyball. She coached with her husband, international beach volleyball referee Richard Casutt, at junior men's national level before they moved to Adelaide for five years. There, she coached volleyball in schools, then state and national programmes, learning in the junior high performance environment and attending the beach volleyball junior world championships. When the couple moved back to Auckland, Campbell coached a senior men's team in the New Zealand club championships for two years. After Campbell became 'a late mum' eight years ago, she took on a five-hour-a-week job as the performance manager at Volleyball NZ. 'I had a female CE, and it was a very inclusive environment for a mum with a young child. We'd have meetings outside so my daughter could run around in the park,' she says. Working with coaches around their national camps, Campbell prioritised relationship building, then understanding the challenges and putting in systems and processes around recruitment, athlete selection and planning. After the interruption of a global pandemic, Campbell's role accelerated. International funding from FIVB enabled Volleyball NZ to invest in beach coaches ahead of the 2022 Commonwealth Games. Beach volleyballer Meile-Rose Green takes instruction from NZ coaches Craig Seuseu and Jason Lochhead. Photo: Thomas Hamill After the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, former top Kiwi player Jason Lochhead returned home with a stellar CV coaching international teams to the Olympics, and helped revive New Zealand's beach volleyball programme, now in Tauranga. Craig Seuseu, another Kiwi legend who coached Germany at the 2012 Olympics, is also part of the coaching team. Now the longest serving employee at Volleyball NZ, Campbell works 32 hours a week. She has the flexibility to work around the needs of her family. 'It's a small organisation with not a lot of resource, so people have to do multiple roles. It can be exhausting, and the big challenge is what are we going to do really well? We can't be everything to everybody all the time,' she says. 'Even though that caring, nurturing side of women makes us feel we have to solve all the problems, all the time, that can be your superpower, but it can be your nemesis too.' One of the areas Campbell has been most interested in is growing women's coaches in volleyball. 'I was really inquisitive around the data and research around women coaching. We needed more enablers,' she says. 'Then I was super curious around how we retain women in our organisation.' So Campbell set up a women's working group – focused on recruiting, retaining and rewarding women in the organisation – who meet monthly. 'As a result of those meetings, these women have felt more confident in the organisation, and now have a forum where they can share their stories in a way they feel safe. There's a contextual environment for them. They've created a network,' she says. The working group are also helping to understand recruitment so shifts can happen for women. 'That's the biggest piece we are gaining clarity on right now,' Campbell says. 'They way we write job descriptions is terrible. Are our values around the jobs they're going to do, and the skill sets they've got, or are they around their personal attributes first and foremost? If we're not a people-focused organisation, then women are going to get lost or they're not going to apply for a position, because it's all about the tasks they'll do. 'So why not create our job descriptions, and that's the last thing they see. Let's not make it 30 bullet points; let's make it five.' The working group feedback is shared at senior leadership meetings. 'They now have a platform and an opportunity to be heard,' Campbell says. Kim Smith, a former Black Fern and Volley Fern, was the first woman to take up a Women in High Performance Sport residency experience with Volleyball NZ. A secondary school teacher, Smith's 12-month role at Volleyball NZ started in 2023 as performance coach advisor for women and girls. 'When Kim was part of our organisation, we changed the way we recruited coaches,' Campbell says. 'The first interview was learning about them as a person, then the next meeting was about their coaching credentials and philosophy on how they'd shape the programme.' Smith's work was innovational. She introduced C.O.D-E F, a mentoring and coach development programme specifically for female coaches aspiring to coach national volleyball teams. Before the residency, Volleyball NZ had just two female coaches – that increased to five at a national level during that year. 'We wanted to make sure this piece of work honoured all the women brave enough to give their voice to research that was able to address what was missing for women,' Campbell says. 'With C.O.D–E F, we wanted to create a bespoke programme designed by women for women but had key principles aligned to what the research was saying was missing. 'What's been significant is that cohort of 13 women stay connected, and they still have a network of support they regularly engage with.' Volleyball NZ coaching team watch from the sidellines at a beach volleyball tournament. Photo: Thomas Hamill Photography One of those women, NZ U19 beach volleyball coach Liz Hanna, was then accepted into HPSNZ's Te Hāpaitanga coach development programme. Antonia Harrison was at the University of North Florida – where she'd played, studied then stayed on to coach for two years – when a conversation with Lochhead encouraged her to return home to work with up-and-coming beach volleyball players. Campbell asked Lochhead and Seuseu if they'd support Harrison in a two-year residency. 'I'm not the person on the sand, or the coaching expert. It has to be driven by them, and be something they see value in doing, because it's actually real value for her and for the sport,' she says. Both men saw the value of the opportunity, including boosting the number of top women coaches in the sport. 'Given we're a sport that's truly 50:50 gender in athletes, and super strong at high school level, I think it's hugely important to make sure we have representation across both genders in coaching and leadership,' Seuseu says. 'So having women like Antonia leading the day camps, organising the drills and holding people accountable, is really important. 'It's equally important for the guys to see we have strong women in leadership as well. The boys have completely bought into Antonia's culture and way of doing things. She's ticked every single box around connection with athletes, structure and debriefs. She's managed to command a lot of respect with the guys and the girls.' Harrison works with just over 20 athletes in the pre-high performance environment. 'I'm loving it. Any day on the beach is a good day,' she says. She runs weekend camps with her squad, with Lochhead as her assistant. He meets her once a week online, Seuseu meets her once a week on the sand, and they also support her at tournaments around the national tour. Campbell also plays a major role in Harrison's development. 'Colleen is super caring and super approachable, and she's been a really cool sounding board,' says Harrison. 'No topic is off limits; you can chat on anything. 'She knows a lot about volleyball and she knows people really well and provides great perspective and context. Nothing is ever a burden – she's always asking, 'Where can I help, how can I make an impact?'' To continue her development, Harrison will coach NZ A teams in international competition and attend the beach volleyball world championships in Adelaide later this year, to help determine where her knowledge gaps lie. A major part of the residency experience is giving coaches space to fail and learn, with support around them, so they can transition to high performance. 'She needs to have that real-life experience to do it,' says Campbell. 'I really believe you have to set environments up for people to be successful, and then if they fail, they can get back up because they know the environment is supportive of their development. If we don't expose her to that, she's not going to close that gap of understanding.' Harrison admitted to Campbell she struggled to recognise her own strengths, questioning whether she was making a meaningful impact on the athletes or if they were progressing enough under her coaching. 'I think the biggest gap is her seeing herself as being the best person to coach at a high performance level,' Campbell says. 'We have a responsibility as a coaching group to nurture and develop that with her, and it can only go at the pace that she's ready for. But we have to be hyper aware of what we're doing and understand what she needs from us. 'Jason is super-invested in Antonia and NZ A, because he knows they're part of the future plan for our programme. We're going to have more teams, so we're going to need more coaches.' For Lochhead – who's coached in Vanuatu, Canada and the US – working with Campbell has helped bring Volleyball NZ together as a team. 'One of the special things about Colleen is that she's so good at reaching out to each of us individually, setting up meetings and getting chats in with our players. She so good at creating bonds with people, she makes us feel connected,' he says. 'As with every sport there's always going to be drama and bumps in the road. But she's great at having those conversations and being straightforward when you need her to be… to kind of hit people with a hard truth, which can help get through stuff.' Campbell sees herself as the person who puts all the puzzle pieces together. 'My job is to help support and guide,' she says. 'The coaches do all the work on the sand, and I do work off the sand to build the puzzle.'
