North-South ‘Double’ proves just out of reach for Old
Two weeks later at Raglan, Brendon Old was racing again though with less chance of making the historic double. His northern campaign was not as robust, and he faced a whole grid of racers who were fresh to the duel and had not travelled to contest the southern rounds.
In fact, the overall northern title went to Challenger VW class racer, Tim Ackers, though it was no easy run to the win. The Challenger grid was three strong, with Mark Goldstone also in the mix and Steven Hughes bringing his car out for a run – though with no prior points to his name.
As it turned out, Hughes went out with a mechanical problem on the first straight in the first heat, leaving Tim Ackers and Mark Goldstone to battle for class honours in that heat and another three.
Their battle went all the way to the last lap of the final race where, after the pair had swapped the lead lap after lap Goldstone got in front as the white flag was shown and Ackers tipped his car into a rollover at the bottom of the main downhill.
It was a spectacular ‘ win-it- or-bin-it’ charge that very nearly won him the heat. The crash could not stop Ackers’ assault on the northern region off-road racing crown either – he landed on his wheels and took
off after Goldstone, safely banking points for second in class in that heat to secure the title!
Old’s run in class three on the rollercoaster clay-based course netted him a clean sweep of wins with Mike Gibson behind him and Connor Nicklin third – the latter two having tangled in one heat in a boneshaking tangle.
The massive growth in number and quality of grids for the powerful class one cars continues, with eight cars gridding up for the event. That said it was soon to be seven, with Tony McCall pulling out of heat one with a drivetrain mechanical issue believed to be a smashed diff.
From that point the battle was a three-way affair, with Nelson’s Dan Fisher ( Razorback Chev) and Karl Fenton (Jimco Chev) sandwiching the smaller Cougar Honda of Justin Davies. Though Fisher went on to win the class with three wins from four starts, Davies had the Cougar well dialledin for the sweeping downhills and clay soil of the course and took the second heat.
Class five went to Ben Howard in a clean sweep of four wins from four starts ahead of Nick Magness and Todd Graham.
Class seven was a solus result for Keegan Russell, who won both the class on the day and for the series.
UTVs deliver on promise
The UTV classes are now well entrenched in offroad racing and well capable of delivering event victories and also outright championship wins. In the JG Civil U class for more standard cars, the north delivers massive grids. This year the pace of change has slowed somewhat, with the new
Polaris single-seater the main launch.
Dyson Delahunty and Dion Edgecombe have both made the move, but Delahunty also has a two-seater RZR 1000 at his disposal, and chose to switch to this from the single-seater he used at Kurow. The change was no disadvantage, handing the young Tauranga driver a clean sweep of class wins, while Dion Edgecombe tipped his single-seater over on one of the big downhills, smashing the front suspension.
In the seven strong ‘modified’ S class, Joel Giddy found himself locked in a day-long battle with Nathan Moore and defending class champion Carl Ruiterman. Giddy won the first heat, chased across the line by Ruiterman; the second heat saw Ruiterman come through for the win with Moore second and Giddy third in some of the closest racing of the day. The third heat was Giddy-Ruiterman-Moore and the standings were only resolved in the final heat which was won by Ruiterman ahead of Moore and Brian Rutgers.
Solus winners
Several classes had only single entrants, all of which took maximum points. I addition to class seven, Warren Adams won 4WD Bits class six in his V8 Nissan Safari and Nick Hall won 4WD Bits class eight in his Toyota Chev ProLite. Neil Hook was also a lone entrant in class ten. Placed with the S class grid, he put on a hard-charging show in his Barracuda