Former champions Duncan Vos and Rob Howie led home teammates Anthony Taylor and Chris Birkin to give the factory team a convincing one/two victory in round three of the Absa Offroad Championship.
Vos and Howie didn’t have it all their way in the earlier stages of this round and had to play a tight game of cat-and-mouse with fellow drivers Birkin and Taylor before taking control of matters on the second of four loops that made up the race to finish around six minutes ahead of their compatriots.
A puncture hit Taylor/Birkin to hand Vos and Howie an advantage that they never relinquished. It gave Vos/Howie their first win of the season while Taylor/Birkin were consoled by scoring their first finish of the season.
Taylor and Birkin won the Donaldson Prologue that determined start positions with Vos and Howie coming in behind reigning SA champions Chris Visser and Japie Badenhorst in the works Team Ford Ranger. An engine overhaul for the Vos/Howie vehicle saw Toyota technicians burn the midnight oil, but the car never missed a beat.
“It was a tough and very technical route,” said Vos. “You had to be on your toes for every second, but the race organisers and the landowners in this area did a tremendous job.”
The final podium place went to Toyota Dealer 400 winners Mike Whitehouse and Mathew Carlson, who produced another workmanlike performance in their Regent Racing Nissan Navara. Fourth position went to the father and son pairing of Hugo and Jaap de Bruyn in their Micaren Exel Toyota Hilux.
Thomas Rundle and Juan Mohr piloted the Barden Tyre Services Nissan Navara to fifth position after a troubled prologue saw the pair start at the back of the field. Even so, according to unofficial scoring, their determined performance enabled them stay two points ahead of Whitehouse and Carlson at the top of the overall championship.
Vos’s win elevates him into third place in the championship, edging ahead of former SA champion Hannes Grobler. The veteran Grobler and Hennie ter Stege (RFS BMW X3) were among the casualties along with Visser and Badenhorst who were forced to call it a day with power steering problems.
The next event on the calendar is the Toyota 1 000 Desert Race in Botswana from 24 to 26 June.