Second overall on the Ford Motorite 400 has lifted Motorite BAT pair Alfie Cox and Hennie ter Stege into a tie at the top of the overall and Class A drivers and co-drivers standings. The pair are level pegging with reigning champions Terence Marsh and Mike Whitehouse (Nashua Mobile BAT), with Cox and ter Stege holding a slight advantage at this stage of the season.
Competitors have to drop one result at the end of the season with fourth place overall on the Limpopo event seeing Marsh and Whitehouse preserve a 100 percent finish record. Dropping an event at this stage would leave Marsh third in the drivers standings behind Cox and Brandon Harcus (Motorite BAT), with Whitehouse second to ter Stege in the co-drivers.
A pointer towards the intensity of the competition can be found in that all four races so far this season have produced different winners. Harcus, Evan Hutchison/Achim Bergmann (Motorite BAT), Nick and Ryan Harper (Karetek BAT) and Gary Bertholdt and Henry Kirstein (Atlas Copco Porter) have all won this season, and the championship race looks as though it will go all the way to the wire.
In Class B the top two crews, brothers Jan and Hendrik Kraaij (Keymax BAT) and Swazilanders John Thompson and Clinton McNamara (Zarco) both have 100 percent finish records. The Kraaij brothers currently hold a five point lead over the Swazi pair with Johan and Etienne Bezuidenhout third in the Adenco BAT.
Class B has also seen four different winners in the four races run so far. Bes Bezuidenhout/Johan de Bruyn (Adenco BAT), Rudi and Pierre van Graan (Technochair Zarco), Giel Nel/Johan Smalberger (Bosal LUK Truggy) and the Kraaij brothers have all won, and this is another championship that looks like going all the way to the final race.
There were only two Class S finishers on the Ford Motorite 400 and second behind first time winners Gary Gillingham and Peter van Vuuren (Shell Racing BMW Raceco) saw reigning champions Richard Schilling and Chris Davies, in the Plastotech Aceco, take a tight hold on this year’s championship. Schilling has an 11 point lead over Nic Goslar (Kopanong Hotel Superteam Raceco) in the drivers standings, with Davies having an 21 point advantage over Craig Doubtfire (Nashua Mobile BAT).
The Gillingham/van Vuuren win moved the Botswana pair up the drivers and co-drivers standings. Gillingham moved into fourth among the drivers behind Schilling, Goslar and Archie Rutherford (Nashua Mobile BAT), with van Vuuren into a tie for third place with Richard Carolin (Kopanong Hotel Superteam Raceco) among the co-drivers.
A non finish saw the Nashua Mobile pair of Rutherford and Doubtfire lose a little ground.
The next round of the Absa Off Road Championship will be the Lesotho Sun 400 in Lesotho on September 1 and 2.
