At the last count Cox was closing in on 30 SA championships, and the KwaZulu-Natalian now has a tight grip on the overall and Class A titles in the Special Vehicle category in this year’s Absa Off Road Championship. After switching from two wheels to four wheels Cox last year won the Production Vehicle championship with Nissan, and winning the Special Vehicle title would give Cox a unique clean sweep.
In the overall championship Cox leads his Motorite BAT team-mate Brandon Harcus by 15 points with reigning champion Terence Marsh (Nashua Mobile BAT) a further 18 points adrift. A third Motorite BAT driver, Evan Hutchison, is in fourth place with Nick Harper (Kartek BAT) fifth.
Among the co-drivers Hennie Ter Stege, who partners Cox, has a healthy 33 point lead over Mike Whitehouse, who sits alongside Marsh. Achim Bergmann, paired with Hutchison, and Ryan Harper, who partners father Nick, are third and fourth with Collin Hunter (Wrapsa BAT) in fifth place.
It is much the same scenario in the Class A stakes. Here Cox again leads Harcus and Marsh among the drivers, while Ter Stege leads Whitehouse and Bergmann among the co-drivers.
A tight points battle has emerged in Class B with only 10 points separating the first three teams. Jan and Hendrik Kraaij (Keymax BAT), in their first year of off road racing, have a slender five point lead over veterans Ernest Corbett and Warwick Goosen (Century Property Developments BAT) who rocketed up the standings after successive wins on the Lesotho 400 and the Sun City 400.
Just five points behind Corbett/Goosen are the Adenco BAT pair of Bes Bezuidenhout and Johan de Bruyn. They have performed consistently throughout the season, and are by no means out of the championship picture.
Two successive wins, one with Gerhard Niemandt and the other with Richard Carolin, have given Nic Goslar (Kopanong Hotel Superteam Raceco), a more than healthy 29 point lead over reigning Class S drivers champion Richard Schilling in the Plastotech Aceco. Schilling and Chris Davies and the Nashua Mobile Raceco pair of Archie Rutherford and Craig Doubtfire were both excluded from the Sun City 400 results, and this did Goslar no harm at all.
Davies still leads the co-drivers but by a much reduced margin. He now has a slender seven point lead over Carolin with Doubtfire a further 14 points adrift.
With just two events remaining pre season predictions that there were going to be some tight Special vehicle championship battles are coming true. The next event is the Toyota Dealer 400 in Mpumalanga on October 27 and 28 and the stakes will be high for those in title contention.