It’s all on in the south

The longest endurance race in New Zealand offroad racing is happening next month.

Backed this year by Giti Tyres, the NZ Kurow 1000 runs across several farms in the Wairau Valley east of the township.

Since my sponsor’s supporting the race, it kinda makes sense that I be first entry. The Giti Tyres Chev Prolite will front up to the start line, buffed and prepped for the go. Leading entries include unlimited class racer Paul Preston, class 10 racer John Hodgson, Challenger VW driver Steve Pacey, and class three racer Kevin Cooper.

The defending NZ1000 champion, Brendon Midgley, crashed at the Woodhill 100 in June. 

The race weekend runs across 22-24 August, with race days being the 23rd and 24th. To be in for the win requires a racer to complete 500km per day. This means it’s like Australia’s Finke Desert Race, slightly slower but much longer.

The special challenge of a two-day endurance race is this: simply finishing first on the Saturday is not enough if the car’s been beaten up in the process, because others who have done that first 500km and looked after their cars can then run harder on the Sunday.

The problem is, nobody can know if a rival has run too hard or if their car is simply tough enough to run at huge pace through day one.

For this reason, the 1000 is the hardest New Zealand offroad race to win.

New Zealand has been the home of the mega-enduro since the 1990s. The Taupo 1000 has had many masters and many sponsors and reached its peak in the stable years early this century when Tony Saelman, Paul Sutton, Colan Humphrey and others formed a capable nucleus of event organisers and ended up overwhelmed by entries, having to cap the grid in order to be able to run the race. Imagine grids of 30 in the Kiwitruck youth category and 100 or more cars and trucks in the main race. Epic.