Fired up for the national championship
In the long lead-in to the southern rounds of the 2018 ORANZ national offroad racing championship, we’ve been tidying the truck after the low flying bale-hopping Leadfoot at Millen’s place up north. Nelson’s published the course for their first round of the championship and it looks very fast. That places extra emphasis on qualifying because if it doesn’t dump rain up in those hills dust will be a nuisance. We’ve got the truck ready, and my head is as ready as it ever will be – so bring it on! I’m looking forward to tackling an enduro with this new Chev body on because the vision is different and the truck feels subtly changed as well.
Competition hots up!
Had a tiny fire to deal with at a club day we used for a shake down, which meant the back end of the truck has been rewired – luckily it was not allowed to burn long so major components weren’t affected. There’s been a lot of idle chatter about the noise rule but most of it seems to come from people who aren’t willing to tackle the issue – and I really think we do have to tackle this head-on. No sport that makes noise is immune, not even the Great God Rugby. Noise is the excuse Auckland Council is giving for kicking Speedway out of Western Springs. But the 60 competitors at Taranaki’s opening round of the championship all passed with flying colours, so I’m not sure what the big deal is. In other news, there’s a rumour we may have TV coverage for some of the southern rounds. I found a crowd down Invercargill way who are interested, and they bring a whole team with them – multiple cameras, a drone, the works. They also have a deal for free-to-air TV already, so there’s no need for us to go to the networks trying to get a spot six months after the event. It works for them because it is off-season from their main paying gig – so the gear is effectively sitting round doing nothing much.
Well impressed
They came to West Melton and took a look at the club day recently (yep, the fiery one), and were well impressed. Which also asks a question of the sport: what is the future of off-road racing? There’s a strong sense that maybe the format needs refreshing and that the endurance races might be able to run as a separate mini-series with the Nelson 500 or NZ 1000 as their flagship ( depending on the year, as the 500 is intended to run in the year ‘opposite’ the 1000). Richard Crabb asked the question of the executive a while back: where do we see the sport in five years, or ten? That started a lot of talk about combining classes, dropping classes, changing this or that. It’s unfortunate though that the talk – being based in social media – quickly descends to an argument and gets personal. There is no doubt a two-car entry at national level is a substandard showing, and everyone agrees we need to do something but when the man with the plan comes around and makes noises about combining – say – class 7, class 5 and Challenger everyone runs screaming.
One answer
Maybe the answer is to combine these sparsely supported classes and also to move the championship to the growing number of permanent tracks where we can partner with councils and get funding to develop facilities. West Melton, TORC’s track, Prices Road are all great spectator venues and easy for a TV company to film. Otago looks likely to have a permanent venue, and I know Nelson are working on the same idea. You’d have to ask the clubs that run classic endurance races: are they strong enough now to stand on their own provided we leave ‘event space’ around their dates? Ultimately, having taken account of the many and diverse individual views, and any feedback that may come from the clubs, it seems likely the exec is going to have to make an executive decision. In the end, that is why they are called executive, isn’t it?
“I have raced on other brands of tyres but haven’t found anything else that can offer as much traction as the GT Radial Komodo. Whether racing, going offroad or simply from A to B - give them a go, you won’t be disappointed.” Bryan Chang