ORANZ 012 Offroad racers seek higher ground

· Whakatane’s Langley aims to take championship lead.

· Third North Island National heads for high ground

· First Australian entry in national championship

Offroad racers heading for the final North Island round of the 2010 Asset Finance New Zealand Offroad Racing Championship will be pleased to know a final change to the venue brings the racing away from the rampant Waikato River and out to the paddocks alongside the Meremere drag strip.

Major flooding in the lower stretches of the Waikato River has forced the final North Island round of the 2010 Asset Finance National Championship to switch to nearby high ground for next weekend’s short course racing.

The All Terrain Racing club made the decision to postpone when members turned out for a working bee and found parts of the track under water. The following weekend, the whole track was submerged, and club equipment on raised areas was threatened with inundation.

Organiser Richard Crabb says the decision to shift was an obvious one, and the club has been fortunate to secure an area adjacent to their regular track.

“The river made our decision for us. I have never seen so much water across the track. But by moving to higher ground just alongside the dragway spectators are still guaranteed a great day of racing, and they will still find the venue an easy one to access because we retain the entry point on Dragway Road off State Highway One.”

The final North Island regional round of the 2010 Asset Finance Offroad Racing Championship gets under way at 10 am on Sunday 26 September at Meremere with a small change to the track. Due to extensive flooding of low-lying areas along the course of the Waikato river, the racing will now take place in the drag complex, affording excellent spectator viewing.

Access is along Dragway Road and through the gate into the drag complex.

More than 45 racers have confirmed their entries and the field will include class one racer Malcolm Langley, currently the leading North Island contender for the national title. he lines up in Southern Lakes Transmissions class one against Neville Smith in his Honda turbo engined class one car, Rob Ryan in his Ryan VW, and Colin Meredith in the former Clive Thornton Southern Cross V6. There are eight entries in the top unlimited class.

In BigPosters Class three, Richard Crabb goes up against the two-car Bu-Mac team of Donn Attwood and James Buchanan, along with Jimmy Green, Rene Sciarone and many other top Super 1600 entries.
In Autoworld Richmond Class five for Super 1300 cars, Hawkes Bay family team Dean and Todd Graham will compete against six other entries that include Nick Hall of Papakura, Pete Tinsley, Phil Finlay and more.

There are even two VW Shoppe class 7 entries, for Mike Peters and Josh Hoyland.

VW Shoppe also supports the popular Challenger VW class, where Geoff Matich, Shane Campbell, Wayne Rowe and Glen Goosen will be in the thick of the action in an eight-strong entry.

The truck classes are also well supported, with Anthony Hewitt and Nigel Newlands renewing their season-long rivalry in AFWE class two for production trucks while Matt Bleakley and Craig Patterson wait for either Hewitt or Newlands to make even the smallest error.

There are two entries in the AFWE challenge truck class, for Pete Weatherley and Warren Adams.

Then in the crowd-pleasing big-banger truck class, one entry makes offroad racing history for New Zealand – the first time an Australian team has entered a round of the New Zealand championship.

Roly and Tom Dixon, stalwart supporters of the bi-annual Asset Finance Taupo 1000 endurance race, have entered an agreement to race Gary Baker’s Nissan Navara V8 in AFWE class eight for ThunderTrucks. The big blue Nissan is fully repaired from its spectacular rollover at the Woodhill 100, and the Dixons say they are keen to try New Zealand offroad racing as a refreshing change from the long road hauls required to race the Australian championship.

Without the cost of road travel in time and dollars, the Dixons say they can race in New Zealand, enjoy a weekend in another country and also do a little work while they are here. Their engineering business, Private Parts Engineering, carries out specialist jobs for the pulp and paper industry including reverse-engineering of existing components.

Baker’s truck holds the ThunderTruck lap record at the Taupo 1000, and posted the third fastest outright lap in the 2009 race.

Though having to change their travel dates has cost extra, the Dixons are excited about the chance to do some short course racing in New Zealand. They will line up in AFWE ThunderTruck class against some of the top four wheel drive race trucks in the sport, including Raana Horan’s supercharged V8 Nissan Titan and the Toyota Tundra of Whakatane’s Clive George, which runs a 406 cubic inch Chev V8.

The championship power play
With five of seven rounds completed, the 2010 Asset Finance New Zealand Offroad Racing Championship looks set to go to the wire.

A champion is likely to be found from the ranks of the Super 1600 or unlimited buggy classes, though the truck and 4X4 classes are threatening to overtake the fast buggies.

Christchurch racer Wayne Moriarty leads the championship outright points race after the full three South Island rounds of the championship. He won the first two South Island championship rounds in his agile Euroblast Cougar Toyota Super 1600 single-seater, but broke his car’s transmission at the third and final regional round leaving him short of valuable points.

Close behind him is Nelson’s Paul Milne, running Darrin Thomason’s old truck; and there are five truck racers in the top ten.

In the north, Malcolm Langley has stepped up from Super 1600 to the unlimited class in his Bakersfield single-seater, with a tidy installation of a Mitsubishi Evo engine. He won his class on debut at Whitianga against a 12-strong unlimited-class grid and won the enduro outright.

Two months later he fought through to be second overall at the second round, the Denny’s Woodhill 100, and was lining up leader and eventual race winner Raana Horan when his car’s new Evo engine got the best of the clutch.

That forced him to follow Horan’s big black Nissan Titan four wheel drive in the closing laps, an experience he says he did not enjoy.

“The change to class one has gone really well, and the Evo power’s great fun. I’d been tracking Raana and was pretty sure I could get past him but once the clutch started to lose grip I couldn’t accelerate out of corner hard enough to close in on the truck. I had to sit behind him and stay away from the grit he was throwing out.”

The narrowest of margins separates the leading teams in this year’s offroad racing national championship. Wayne Moriarty has had two months to repair his transmission damage, and is likely to head into the national final at Labour Weekend just a handful of points ahead of Langley. This means the pressure is on Langley to post a clean set of results at Meremere.

Then at the national final the 2010 Asset Finance New Zealand Offroad Racing Championship rests on the strength of fields in Southern Lakes Transmissions Class One (Langley) and Bigposters Class 3 (Moriarty), with the AFWE production and sport truck classes waiting for a chance at the top step of the podium as well.

A strong turnout in either field at the final could deny the top teams essential points and allow others in the top ten to secure the title – or even let a prospect further down the points table slip through for an upset win.