An exciting new addition to the 2014 Asia Pacific Rally Championship is Chinese driver Jun Xu in a Skoda Fabia S2000.

Xu may not have a lot of international experience and certainly the fast roads at this weekends event in New Zealand will be all new for him, however with the power and traction of the Fabia S2000 its going to be hard to keep him off the podium.

The team with will be accompanied by a television crew from Chinese state broadcaster CCTV-5, exposing the Asia Pacific Rally Championship to a potential TV audience of 1.3 billion viewers.

“It has taken a lot of work by many different people to get them here” said APRC Teams coordinator Murray Brown, “its great news for the championship to have another Skoda in the mix and even better to have the APRC in front of a massive television audience in China”. Xu and and co-driver will start the event at number #4 .

The International Rally of Whangarei is based around the Northland city of Whangarei and sees crews compete across 14 special stages totalling 241 competitive kilometres during Saturday 12 April and Sunday 13 April, 2014.