Tuesday's publication of the start order for this weekends’ Wales Rally GB confirms that Mark Higgins will start in the elite group of world rally car drivers at the head of the field.

Higgins, the reigning British champion, has entered the final round of the World Rally Championship in a privateer 2005 Ford Focus WRC, the VK car owned by Steve Perez, and he has high hopes of challenging for a points scoring result. He has been awarded a priority level 2 seeding by the FIA and will therefore head into the Welsh forests 16th on the road for Friday’s first leg.

Irishman Gareth MacHale and British teenager Matthew Wilson, both WRC regulars, will run ahead of Higgins, who is driving the car that Perez crashed heavily on the RBS International Manx in May.

Mark is one of four ‘Manx’ competitors on the event:

Co-driver Rob Fagg, who will make his WRC debut, has also received a seeding boost.
Fagg and regular British Championship driver, Shropshire’s James Wozencroft, have benefited from a prestigious nomination from the sports’ UK governing body, the MSA, as a wild-card entry for the Junior WRC round. In addition to making the Suzuki Ignis pair eligible for JWRC points they will now start among the entries for that series rather than the Tesco 99 Octane BRC crews, moving them around 20 places higher. The pair will be concentrating on the battle for the Super 1600 British title and go into the event leading the standings from works Suzuki driver Guy Wilks.

David Higgins also returns to world championship action, driving a Hankook tyres-supported production Mitsubishi Evo 9. David led the Production category early on last years event until suffering from punctures, but this time will face added competition from the BRC regulars such as Ryan Champion, Gwyndaf Evans and Jonny Milner.

Both David and Rob have headed to the event directly from last weekends final round of the Chinese national championship, and have therefore missed part of the recce.

Andrew Bargery, co-driving for Justin Dale in a Renault Clio, is still chasing the British title for the 2-litre, two wheel drive category.

This year marks the first time since 1979 that Britain ’s WRC round has also been a round of the British series.