Nowhere is the situation better illustrated than in the overall and Super Production Class championships. The off-road championship scoring system sees to it that recent Lesotho Sun 400 winners Hannes Grobler and Francois Jordaan, in the Proudly South African Nissan Navara, lead the overall championship while the works Ford Racing Ranger pairing of Neil Woolridge and Kenny Skjoldhammer lead the SP Class standings.
In both cases, however, the Nissan crew has a slight advantage. Woolridge and Skjoldhammer have scored in every round of the championship so far, and must drop at least one score at the end of the season.
As matters stand that is the points they earned on the Toyota 1000 Desert Race. In the overall championship Grobler/Jordaan have a 14 point lead over their Ford rivals, while in the SP Class standings Woolridge and Skjoldhammer lead by just two points.
Slowed by suspension and steering problems in the latter part of the Lesotho Sun 400, the Ford crew decided to settle for third place behind Grobler/Jordaan and the Castrol Toyota Hilux 4.0 pair of Mark Cronje/Chris Birkin. The gloves will be off, however, in the final three rounds and some superb racing lies in store.
In the overall standings another factory Nissan crew, Duncan Vos and Ralph Pitchford, lie in third place with Class D leaders Chris Visser and Japie Badenhorst, in the Tyco Trucks Toyota Hilux, getting in among the big guns. The Toyota crew are in fourth place after a third successive win on the Lesotho Sun 400.
It is no surprise that Visser and Badenhorst have a commanding lead in Class D. Closest challengers Coetzee Labuschagne and Johan Gerber (Raysonics Nissan Hardbody) and Cliff and Louis Weichelt, in the Bosal Toyota Hilux, both failed to see out the distance in Lesotho.
This has left Visser and Badenhorst with a 28 point lead over the Labuschagne/Gerber combination. The Toyota crew have now won four times this season with the other victory going to the Weichelt’s.
Despite a miserable Lesotho Sun 400 which finally saw the pair time barred Manfred Schroder and Ward Huxtable (Ford Racing Ranger) stay in charge of proceedings in Class E. A win in Lesotho, however, has lifted brothers Mark and Stuart Moffat (Bosal Toyota Hilux) into second place behind the factory Ford crew.
Castrol Toyota Hilux factory driver Brian Martin moves into third place among the drivers, with Jannie Visser Toyota Hilux in fourth place. Ockie Fourie, who normally sits alongside Martin, was pressed into SP Class duty in Lesotho and Joks le Roux, co-driving for Visser, moves into third place in the co-driver standings.