BUCHANAN TAKES HARD FOUGHT WOODHILL OFFROAD RACE WIN

BUCHANAN TAKES HARD FOUGHT WOODHILL OFFROAD RACE WIN
• BuMac offroad race team dominate the podium
• Buchanan scores maiden Woodhill win in clean run to the flag
• Flat tyre slows team-mate Attwood who makes sure of third
• Thornton claws through to second overall

West Auckland racer James Buchanan has won the toughest one day endurance race in New Zealand motorsport, the 2012 Frontline Projects Woodhill 100.
Buchanan, at the wheel of his immaculately prepared Bu-Mac Cougar Suzuki single-seater race car, drove a cannily-judged race on Sunday 3 June, allowing the big horsepower unlimited class cars to go out and fight for the race lead in what was billed as the fastest and longest  Woodhill 100 ever.
He fought his way through from a qualifying grid position at the tail end of the top ten as the front-runners struck mechanical problems in what has always been the toughest race in New Zealand offroad racing.
The early front-runners in this year’s race included Melvin Rouse of Whangarei, one-time Woodhill winners Clim Lammers of Hikurangi and Alan Butler of Mt Albert along with multiple Woodhill champion Tony McCall of Manukau.
Organisers had laid out a course that included long straights down the forest’s ‘logging highways’ where the leading group of cars were hitting their rev limiters in top gear – in some cases more than 220 km/h – on loose gravel surfaces.  The new course cut out several of the slowest, roughest sand tracks and a new start-finish area offered spectacular viewing in the opening laps while the 59-strong field was bunched close together.
In qualifying early on Sunday morning Tony McCall scored pole by an emphatic two-second margin in the qualifying session.  He waited until almost the whole field had completed their qualifying sprints before wheeling out the new BSL Terra Chev to blitz the existing pole time which had been shared by Steve Stokes and Alan Butler.
Then at race start McCall thundered into the lead with Butler in hot pursuit.  It was not to last: the McCall car’s Mendeola race transmission failed part-way into the first lap.
Alan Butler had stayed close behind in his American-built Millennium  single seater with Mitsubishi Evo turbo power – and with McCall’s withdrawal Butler looked to have stepped into a lead he could comfortably maintain as the six-lap 246 km race developed.
A lap later, though, the Butler Millennium Evo slewed off the track in a slow area with its front-left suspension smashed.  The car’s suspension upright had broken apart and the damage was unrepairable.
Clim Lammers was also handily placed, but disappeared on the second lap.  The Lammers family runs no less than three unlimited-class cars – but the cars of Jardyne and Clim Jnr went out on the first lap.
The early attrition rate was high – only 17 cars of the 59-strong field finished the first lap on race pace.  Some would recover and rejoin the race but as the sand tracks became more cut up the punishing conditions took their toll on race vehicles and drivers.
As each of the bigger cars failed in turn, Buchanan had edged closer and closer to the lead, battling with other leading racers in his class and fending off the attentions of Colin Sandford in the ex-Lyndsay Dowler Toyota Hilux V8.
With Butler gone, Buchanan slipped into the lead and proceeded to extend his advantage through the remaining four laps.
Whangarei’s Melvin Rouse was close behind and ready to challenge for the lead in his Nissan turbo powered unlimited class car.  With significantly more power on tap from his car’s Nissan SR20 turbo engine than the lighter car of Buchanan, it seemed Rouse could take and hold the lead if he could cleanly overtake the Buchanan car. 
The two engaged in a hard-fought duel over the remaining laps that was only resolved part-way through the penultimate lap when Rouse hit a tree stump and destroyed his right rear tyre.
Offroad Racing Association president Donn Attwood of west Auckland was racing in his seventh Woodhill in his current car.  He picked up a flat right rear tyre on the second lap and was forced to pit to change it, but returned in a determined push back through the field.
The Sandford Hilux went out when it lost the drive belt off the engine’s supercharger.
Closing in over the last couple of laps were the Whakatane based duo of Clive Thornton and Malcolm Langley, lapping almost nose to tail in the fast and the rough alike until Langley crashed into the back of Thornton’s bigger car and fell back.
Also in the wars when the track became temporarily blocked late in the race as Donn Attwood, who was hit from behind by Colin Meredith.  His Bu-Mac RV Magnum Toyota two-seater survived the impact, though his engine cage was pushed forward by almost 180 mm.  Attwood was carrying a passenger for the first time in many attempts at the Woodhill, and had suffered a rear tyre puncture on the second lap.  Attwood had said before the race he planned to run at a reduced pace – but was slowly clawing his way through the field heading for third on the track.
Whangarei’s Craig Westgate was the fastest truck as the race entered the closing laps, pushing his locally-built Ford Ranger V8 into the top five as track conditions worsened wherever there was deep sand.
Clive Thornton mounted a charge and pushed the big Desert Dynamics Chev V8 into second overall, winning Whakatane Commercial Spares class one.  Donn Attwood moved into third place close behind as the race came to a close – but neither could make much impression on the 20 minute buffer built up by Buchanan who took the chequered flag for his first Woodhill win.  Thornton’s second  was a fine reward for a determined drive up through the field; Attwood’s third place gave the Bu-Mac team a two-car presence on the event podium and a dominant 1-2 finish in Leader Products.
Only 11 cars completed all six laps of the punishing course; a further 15 completed enough laps to be counted a finisher.