Manukau has kicked off the off-road racing season in fine style. When the proposed summer series at Colin Dale Motorsport Park late last year stumbled for lack of entries, the club pivoted neatly to create a single three-way event that put rallycars and off-roaders on the purpose-built track and ran three events in one at the start of February: the stand-alone Mickey Thompson Tyres Off-road Grand Prix, a Dunlop-backed rallysprint and the opening round of the national championship.
In the off-road racing heats and grand prix, the men to beat were defending champion Carl Ruiterman, class 8 racer Nick Hall and unlimited class legend Tony McCall.
Ruiterman dominated the S-class UTV heats, leaving the pursuing pack so far behind in most heats that his dust had settled before they emerged onto the front straight. He won the class ahead of Aaron Rogers and Dave Templeman and set an outright lap record of 56.00sec in the process.
Nick Hall had his Vertex-backed Toyota Chev Prolite similarly well prepared and used it to grab an early lead, helped by Leigh Bishop who didn’t manage a clean start in heat one and had to fight his way through the eight-strong field to a podium. Both benefited from the misfortune of Richard Crabb, who was ready to go in the Toyota Pro4 until the clutch bearing failed when he went to grid up. Hall won the class, ahead of a hard charging Leigh Bishop. Shawn Dickins, driving Nick Leahy’s Prolite, was third.
In the unlimited class, McCall’s carefully developed V8-engined car was the class of the field, followed closely by Daynom Templeman, who was driving with a broken finger but recovered to take the class win. Spins in later heats dropped Tony McCall to third. In the feature race, Templeman then managed to force a mistake from McCall in the feature race, taking the win after a dramatic battle for the top spot.
The event attracted 63 entries including 12 Kiwitrucks, setting a high bar for coming rounds.
In the Dunlop Rallysprint, things were less clear. Steve Cox in the mighty Audi Quattro S1 was struggling with understeer in his first competition outing on the puggy wet clay surface, Nick Marshall was fast in the Marshall family’s Ford Laser Lynx V6 4WD, as was Clint Cunningham in a Skoda Fabia formerly campaigned by Raana Horan. The cars ran on a 15 second delay rally-style to ensure they got away onto the track cleanly as there was a serious difference in power, traction and speed between those top crews and the likes of the Mk 1 Cortina also racing.
Clint Cunningham emerged as the rally sprint champion, piloting his RCK Contractors Skoda Fabia 4WD to victory with an impressive five-lap feature time of 4:53. Pakuranga’s Nick Marshall (First Aluminium V6 Ford Lynx 4WD) finished in second with a time of 5:02. At the same time, West Auckland’s Steve Cox claimed third in his Audi Quattro with 5:04.
This was the first time the rally teams had competed on the same track as the off-roaders since Mike Parkes organised a superstage face-off just up the road at Manukau on the Rally NZ site back in the late 1990s. On that occasion, competitors started side by side and crossed at the stage midpoint to find the fastest racers of the day.
The final two were Tony McCall in his Cougar and Marty Roestenburg in his Mitsubishi Evo III. The same two were driving forces behind February’s event, McCall promoting the day and driving while Roestenburg was looking after the rally contingent.
