T&T Ral­ly Club (TTRC) dri­ver and this year's Ral­ly Trinidad win­ner, John 'Pen­ti' Pow­ell has teamed up with Ja­maican co-dri­ver Michael Fen­nell (Pan­ton's navi) to con­test the FIA NACAM Ral­ly Cham­pi­onship.

The team touched down in Mex­i­co on Wednes­day to do the first round of the Cham­pi­onship this week­end in Puebla, Mex­i­co. The NACAM Ral­ly Cham­pi­onship is con­test­ed over six rounds, and will con­tin­ue as fol­lows: May 18-20 in Mex­i­co, Ju­ly 6-8 in Cos­ta Ri­ca, Au­gust 30-Sep­tem­ber 2 in Pe­ru, Oc­to­ber 12-14 in Pana­ma and No­vem­ber 16-18 in Cos­ta Ri­ca.There are 16 en­tries in the Cham­pi­onship from eight coun­tries, how­ev­er each round of the Cham­pi­onship will have many more dri­vers. The en­try list for the first event which is 132 km, start­ed yes­ter­day and has just over 40 teams. So far, Pow­ell's biggest com­pe­ti­tion will be Ri­car­do Triv­i­no (Mex­i­co), who has raced at World Ral­ly Cham­pi­onships (WRC) lev­el in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for a num­ber of years. He placed tenth in Ral­ly Mex­i­co dri­ving a Ford Fi­es­ta RS, just 23 min­utes be­hind Se­bastien Loeb.

How­ev­er, Triv­i­no went to Ral­ly Ja­maica in 2008 and was not com­fort­able against Caribbean com­pe­ti­tion and did not fin­ish. Triv­i­no has won the NACAM cham­pi­onship be­fore and will be at home this week­end for sure. Pow­ell is one of the Caribbean's top dri­vers with the Ral­ly Ja­maica (2011), Ral­ly Trinidad (2005, 2006, 2010, 2012), and Ral­ly Guade­loupe (2010) ti­tles to his name. He will be head­ing to Bar­ba­dos in June to at­tempt the three-peat of re­gion­al ral­ly­ing, some­thing that has nev­er been ac­com­plished in the same year. If he does well, he will be­come an FIA seed­ed dri­ver which opens a world of pos­si­bil­i­ty in­ter­na­tion­al­ly for even larg­er events. For this cham­pi­onship, how­ev­er, he will be com­pet­ing in a Mit­subishi Evo IX-Group N which he should be ex­treme­ly com­fort­able in as this is his fourth time own­ing one.