DIRT NATION
Up the Jack and Jill: our 2020 season has kicked off with a jaunt up the Nevis Road in the company of Mr H Paddon and others. This hill climb follows the very spectacular Race to the Sky and was in its debut year. The response from competitors was exceptional – the event had a waiting list! Spectators were admitted free and the course was very quick – quicker than the Race to the Sky.
Unfortunately deadlines being what they are, this was written before the hill climb, so an account of that adventure will have to wait for another day. Suffice to say, having been a semipermanent fixture at the old Race to the Sky, there was no way I was going to miss ‘Hayden’s Hill’.
These events are a fantastic way to put offroad racing on show in front of a wider sporting audience.
Off-road racing is taking some encouraging steps forward at the moment. After years of asking clubs and racers what they wanted, and getting little intelligible guidance, the sport has decided to combine classes two and four together, with some rule tweaking to enable the maximum number of vehicles to run in the new class which is referred to at the moment simply as class four.
Likewise class six gets combined with class eight and will be called class eight for now.
In each case this is because the less modified trucks are being absorbed up into a class with greater freedoms, which will enable them to be prepared to a standard better able to handle the stresses and shocks of the sport.
It also gives people with current class two and six trucks time to evolve their vehicles to take advantage of the new freedoms. I am sure Ron Crosby, national class two champion in 2019, would rather have had someone in his class to race against.
This year we lost a southern round to the exceptionally dry summer – Otago had to pull the pin on the opening round at Slim and Janina Slee’s property in Kurow due to fire risk concerns. Fair enough – plenty of small sports are getting hit by councils and the like at the moment for environmental transgressions.
JG Civil steps up
The slight delay to March gave the sport time to sort national sponsorships, which have rejigged very encouragingly. Buoyed by record grids in the ‘rock star’ classes at many events, ORANZ has once more opened up the championship naming rights sponsorship, which has been taken by Joel Giddy, hard-out UTV S class racer and long-time Good Bloke.
He was previously sponsoring the UTV classes and has brought his company, JG Civil, up to the new opportunity. Musical chairs ensues – Leigh and Michelle Bishop step up with their company Concrete Treatments to fill the gap Joel has left at the UTV category.
Warren Adams continues to back the 4WD/truck classes through his business 4WD Bits and Neville ‘Cougar’ Smith has agreed to sponsor the Kiwitruck youth category through his business Cougar Race Cars. Neville is a master welder and race car designer, and apart from the Cougar frame he also does a nice line in UTV swap-out frames, flat-pack spaceframes for ProLites, and of course elegant new frames for Kiwitrucks. He has also been the sport’s technical guru for some time.
These guys are all ‘giving back’ to the sport they love. Others could follow their example.
That’s a huge endorsement in the championship, and it leaves only the race car classes – the ‘dune buggies’ as some in the truck classes will say – without a sponsor. Who knows, we might yet have a full family of sponsors in place.
Truck gossip is a bit thin at the moment, though I know Richie Ryder’s handsome little Toyota Hilux in its Walker Evans tribute colour scheme has gone north to a bloke called Arin Riwhi.
Previously Arin had been picking people’s brains to work out how best to get into the sport. I think he just found the right way, and by happy coincidence he arrives in class 4 just at a time when there are going to be bigger numbers of these sport trucks.
Likewise Shane Huxtable makes a welcome return to the sport in a stunning new self-built class 8.
We also lost the entry of defending national champion Nick Hall when he barrel-rolled the Toyota Hilux ProLite V8 at a Counties event. Nick punctured his left knee and it got infected, putting him in hospital for the week. He’ll be back, but the injury to his knee meant there was no chance he could compete at the opening round.