Sting in the tail
4WD Sport lashed by Delta storm
Cancelled or postponed: Hayden Paddon’s hillclimb; the Ashley Forest rallysprint, the Battle of Jack’s Ridge, the second and third North Island rounds of the 2021 New Zealand Off-road Racing Championship, the classic Woodhill 100 ff-road race, and the
2021 national off-road racing championship final.
It might be easier to list the events that haven’t been affected by the Covid Delta lockdown.
In the 4WD world the club scene is resurgent, and the national trials series – along with the Suzuki Extreme series – managed to complete their competition years without being battered by Covid.
Offroad racing took a pounding for the second year running and even now, plans for the 2022 off-road racing national championship are vague.
But in south Auckland it’s a different story. National champion and event organiser Tony McCall has confirmed up to four televised off-road race events for the early months of 2022.
Building on the success of his inaugural Stadium Off-road Racing Championship, McCall will first stage a ‘reboot’ of the New Zealand Off-road Grand Prix held in the late 1980s and early-mid 1990s at Te Atatu in west Auckland. Originally planned for late 2021, the event is a rapid-fire speedway style day of short course racing to be held at the purpose-built track at Colin Dale Park at Manukau. It will now take place on 22 January 2022, kicking off the racing year, and has a 1.5-hour TV package confirmed on TV3. The event offers free entry for off-road racers from the South Island.
The Battle of Jack’s Ridge will now happen on 5-6 February 2021; top off-road racers including McCall are planning to compete there.
The 2022 New Zealand Stadium Off-road Racing Championship runs over two weekends: 12 February and 26 February, giving racers time to fettle their vehicles between rounds. Both weekends have a 1.5-hour edited TV programme on TV3. The 2021 championship coverage was the all-time top rating programme across all free-to-air TV networks with more than 250,000 viewers. The 2021 events drew more than 4,000 spectators and 200 entries across the two weekends.
Hayden Paddon’s Golden 1200 at Ben Nevis has a new date: 5-6 March. Off-road racers are likely to be an ‘invitation’ category.
Still in the planning stages but already stirring interest from all around New Zealand is the return of the legendary Taupo
1000 endurance race, which has long enjoyed cult status in offroad racing. McCall has secured the ‘old team’ of Tony Saelman and the dedicated crew who helped make the Taupo 1000 internationally famous, and plans to run it on a course just 15 minutes from Taupo. The plan is to build on the event knowledge gained by Saelman’s team and plot a lap that is 50 km long, has 30 km of forest roads and 20 km ‘under the trees’. Set down for September, the event has a commitment for dual one-hour magazine-style TV shows and will run classes for a wide range of vehicles including traditional and winch-style 4WDs.