Aussie-bound Nelson offroad racer takes enduro win

On the eve of leaving to work in Australia, Nelson racer Ashley Kelly has won the Nelson Ruff’n’Tuff endurance race, the first South Island round of the 2012 Mickey Thompson New Zealand Offroad Racing Championship.
Kelly, a longtime offroad racer, now finds himself torn between work opportunities in Australia and the lure of a championship title and must weigh the two over coming weeks.
With fastest time in qualifying for the 192 km event and a flag to flag victory under his belt, Kelly is well placed to build his points tally in the second South Island round, the Mainland Challenge in Christchurch in late June.  He finished the event with his Nissan turbo-powered car in perfect condition, meaning maintenance to keep it in race-winning trim is likely to be a simple task.  Nelson club officials say he could easily ‘commute’ back to race, citing the example of North Island racer Mike Hughes, who comes to New Zealand from Florida USA to race his Ford F150 truck.
Though recent national championship rounds hosted by Nelson have not been well favoured by good weather, the Saturday enduro was held in bright sunshine, and instead of mud and dust the racers found themselves grappling with thick dust as the event got under way.
Plotted over a fast forest course off Korere-Tophouse Road 60 km south of the city,  the race attracted teams from as far south at Tuatapere.   Speeds in excess of 165 km/h were recorded by leading competitors in the quicker sections of a 12 km track many described as being rally-style.
North Island racer Darryn Bell brought his TVR-engined Range Rover to the event – his first South island offroad race.  Though a qualifying mistake put him at the back of the grid for the race, he was third in class and said afterward he was ‘absolutely blown away’ by the event and by the welcome he received.
“I can’t say enough about the race and the club – it was fantastic, and I’m very much looking forward to the next round now.”
Race organiser Darrin Thomason crashed out early in the race, putting his Nissan Navara over a bank near the course’s steep ‘drop off’, a fire-break downhill section of track that caught out a number of competitors.
Thick dust accounted for some of the race’s 50 per cent attrition, though others fell victim to mechanical failures.  Kevin Nankivell was running his innovative new Honda-powered class one race car, a sleek single-seater with a distinctive ‘arrowhead’ body style; he went out when the car’s Renault transmission failed.
The normally reliable Challenger VW class had no finishers with all three entries either crashing out of suffering mechanical failures.
Donald Preston of Winton was lucky to hang on and win ThunderTruck class 8 in his supercharged V8 four wheel drive Toyota Hilux after his air cleaner collapsed, robbing him of precious horsepower and torque; Christchurch driver Bryan Chang narrowly missed winning the class in his GT Radials Ford Falcon turbo when he hit an obstacle and suffered a flat rear tyre, forcing him to run more than half a lap to the pits on a deflating tyre.
As the racers completed 120 of the 192 km, the dust hazard had become so extreme that officials decided to declare the race early in the interests of safety, handing Kelly his win though by a narrow margin of just one second: close behind him and on a magnificent fightback for a start position of fifth was Christchurch driver Wayne Moriarty.  Tuatapere driver Hamish Lawlor in his tiny but powerful Barracuda Suzuki had held on to second for half the race before being overtaken by Moriarty, though he held no for third place.  Fourht overall was a Nelson driver, Gordon Adamson.
The first race truck to finish was the Nissan of Roger McKay in sixth place.