Rajendra Jadusingh was back at the top of the dexterity leaderboard when he placed the fastest time overall in his MINI at Asphalt Assault: Dirt Splurt on Sunday, September 17, at the Tru-Juice Orchards, Bog Walk, St Catherine.

“Getting the fastest time overall obviously felt great! It’s nice when you use a regular little car like mine to beat some pretty nice rear-wheel drive cars that are powerful and have limited slip differentials, and the guys are good. Joel is a good driver. Whitty [Maurice Whittingham] is a good driver, so it felt pretty good to win,” Jadusingh told the Jamaica Observer‘s weekly Auto magazine.

Jadusingh has always been the centre of competition in the dexterity series, using his extensive driving skills to his benefit instead of opting for professional high-performance machinery to humble his rivals.

Last year, his MINI One forced the hand of many bigger names and faster cars. For 2023, he’s been on the podium, but hadn’t been on its top step until the series made its usual mid-season transition from wet tarmac to gravel.

“It’s much better for the MINI when it’s on loose surface, because it has such low horsepower. On the tarmac surfaces it doesn’t really get moving quickly. There’s not enough wheel spin to bring up the rpms out of the corners, and it doesn’t have enough torque to pull it either. The loose surface actually helps it get up into rpms a little quicker because you get some wheel spin, plus, of course, it’s not a hydraulic handbrake, and I don’t run these little tiny back tyres that some people put on. So when you’re using the handbrake on high-grip surfaces, especially when you don’t have a limited slip, like me, it tends to be quite difficult on right hand 360-degree turns that are clockwise. It doesn’t do those very well,” Jadusingh explained.

The conditions seemed favourable to the front-wheel drive faithful as second position was taken by the Mitsubishi Lancer sedan of the Montegonian Stephen Mahoney.

Finding himself in third place was round two winner Joel Jackson, tackling the dirt in his Mazda Miata. He attributed his finish position to two elements of the event.

“The track that they used, the surface is very loose, but there’s no real base underneath, so sweeping away the surface gravel doesn’t do much. Driving a rear-wheel drive car that naturally wants to break loose makes it very difficult to be fast. Secondly, the track that they laid out didn’t really suit rear-wheel drive cars either,” said Jackson.

He however gave credit to those who finished ahead of him.

“To be frank, both Raj and Stephen Mahoney did a better job than I did, because at the end of the day the conditions were the same for all of us,” Jackson said.

With the podium positions tied up, it was the Subaru BRZ of Jhaun Bryan in fourth and Maurice Whittingham who completed the top five finishers.