It was Nissan’s third successive win in the tough Lesotho event, which saw only 12 of the 23 production vehicles that started Saturday’s 350-km race successfully reach the finish near Maseru.
Second overall and also second in the Super Production class, nearly six minutes in arrears, were Mark Cronje and Chris Birkin in a Toyota Hilux, followed by Neil Woolridge and Kenny Skjoldhammer in their class SP Ford Ranger, who were a further 1 min 25 sec behind.
Nissan’s Duncan Vos and Ralph Pitchford, winners of the Ford Motorite Limpopo 400 in July, were fifth in the second Proudly South African Navara, 1 hr 6 min behind the winners. The former champions were fastest in Friday’s 44-km prologue and were enjoying a comfortable six-minute lead over the Ford pair of Woolridge and Skjoldhammer two thirds of the way into the race, when they got stuck in a muddy section and lost over an hour before they were rescued by Nissan privateers Mark Corbett and Juan Mohr in the Century Property Developments class SP Navara.
Together with Grobler/Jordaan and Vos/Pitchford, the privateer pair also won for Nissan the manufacturers’ team prize for the event.
Grobler and Jordaan thoroughly deserved their win after problems in Friday’s prologue saw them start Saturday’s race from 21st place in the combined field of 23 production and 35 special vehicles and four minutes behind Vos and Pitchford.
In a characteristic charge through the field, the championship leaders were up to 12th on the road and fifth production vehicle at the end of the first of the three laps that made up the route. During the second lap they moved up to third after passing the Toyota of Cronje and Birkin.
With more than a minute advantage over the Toyota, they stopped to offer assistance to team-mates Vos and Pitchford, who’s Nissan was stranded in mud 15 km from the end of the lap and the compulsory stop at the designated service point. When they reached the DSP with one lap to go they were third, 4 min 25 sec behind the Ford and 42 sec behind the Toyota.
Woolridge was delayed in the pits with a rear suspension problem, so it was Cronje and Grobler who led the production vehicle field at the start of the third and final lap. The Nissan driver gave chase and remained within striking distance in the Toyota’s dust until Cronje was forced to stop with a flat tyre.
Corbett and Mohr, in only their second outing in the Nissan Motorsport-built Navara, were lying second and challenging race leaders Vos and Pitchford a third of the way through the event when they were forced to return to the designated service point to repair an oil pipe on the steering rack.
Like many of the competitors, they too got stuck in the mud (unseasonal heavy rains in Lesotho made many parts of the route particularly treacherous) and lost some 20 minutes on the final lap before being rescued by fellow Nissan privateers Jurie and Andre du Plessis in their BB Auto Group Hardbody.
This was just one of many examples of the excellent sportsmanship and camaraderie that exists in off road racing. It also cost the Du Plessis brothers a certain class D win, as they were leading their class at the final marshal when they were forced to stop to fix a loose electrical connection. As a result, they came in second in class and ninth overall in the production vehicle category, just over a minute behind class D winners Chris Visser and Japie Badenhorst in a Toyota Hilux.
Their excellent performance, their best this year, helped Nissan to score enough points to close the gap to Toyota in the manufacturers’ championship to just 14 with three races to go.
Thomas Rundle and Brian Roberts were relieved to score their first points of the year when they brought their class E Barden Tyre Services Nissan Hardbody home in the top 10 overall and second in class.
Regular class D competitors Coetzee Labuscagne and Johan Gerber were the only one of the four Nissan privateer teams entered who were unable to complete the event. They had problems in the prologue when they got stuck in mud and were forced out of the race itself just 50 km after the start on Saturday morning when a front sideshaft on their Raysonics Hardbody broke.
