The final round of the Absa Off Road Car Championship took place in a new venue in the area west of Tarlton International Raceway and was a fast and demanding event.
The Century Racing pair has proved competitive this season and had they completed more events they would have finished higher than their final championship position of seventh overall in the class A BAT.
They got their final racing weekend off to a good start with fourth place among the special vehicles in Friday’s 67-km prologue. They had moved up to third by the start of the second and final 162-km loop that made up Saturday’s route, which was distinguished by heavy red dust that hung over the road in the windless conditions, making overtaking hazardous.
Mark Corbett and Rudi Balzer had hoped to bring the radical four wheel drive CR1 home in the final event of the year, but were halted by a broken shaft in the throttle body.
“We were having a good run up until then – we had completed about 52 km of the first of Saturday’s two 162-km loops and passed several other specials – so it’s frustrating when something like this happens,” said Balzer.
“But the CR1 is a brand new car with a lot of new features and we have to expect things to break. This is how you find the weak points and make them strong. All the problems we’ve had this year have been fixed without recurrences.
“Our prologue was affected by a problem with the turbo anti-lag system. We could have done a lot better than 10th among the special vehicles. We reprogrammed this before the race and we had no further trouble with it.
“On the whole we’re happy with the progress we’ve made with the CR1 this year,” said Century Racing’s Julien Hardy. “It’s the first time anyone has built a car like this, with four wheel drive and anti-lag, so it has been very much a development year and learning all about the car.
“It’s very quick and has proved it has the pace to run at the front. We’d like to have got a few more racing kilometers under our kidney belts, but we’ve learnt a great deal and while we have a bit more work ahead of us, we look forward to next season.”
