The south’s the place to be for the final rounds of the 2026 national championship, for sure.

Over the weekend of 22-23 AUGUST, Otago club hosts the Southern Dirtfest 250 at Slim Slee’s property in Kurow, then the focus shifts to West Melton, which hosts the penultimate round on 19 September and the two-day national final over Labour Weekend in October.

That’s a heck of a lot of racing with only weeks between each round for teams to repair and prepare for their next thrashing.

Up north, the championship racing ended with the classic Woodhill 100 over King’s Birthday at the end of May. That race was won by Tony McCall, who took his seventh Woodhill title to become the most successful ‘Woodie’ of all time. He’s unlikely to come south for more championship racing because he’s also the most successful national championship racer of all time. And the most successful class one racer of all time. Nothing more to prove, at championship level.

Otago club’s ready for the two-day Dirtfest, which runs as a short course on the Saturday and an endurance race the following day. This course includes what is by far the biggest ‘tabletop’ jump in the sport, a long uphill run leading to massive air with snow-capped alps in the background. It’s always an epic experience to have upwards of two metres of air under your vehicle, lap after lap.

Although if you get it wrong, it can all get pretty messy, as Christchurch racer Mark Brown would tell you. Last time he raced there he barrel-rolled his car into a trailer-load of bits.

It’s not the only part of the track that can bite. When the big class one cars get out there and get feisty things get a bit tricky – as Mike Fraser and John Morgan found out a few years ago, battling for the lead until Morgan had a huge ‘bicycle’ moment down on the flat.

So: the short course action starts around 10am on the Saturday, as does the 250km enduro the next day.

Slee’s farm is a spectacular place to drive in short course or enduro races; the short course is of course the best viewing for spectators because the whole course can be viewed from the hill that is also the pit and paddock location. The enduro is always a classic farm race, wide open and fast with a number of gates to negotiate at high speed – just to keep drivers on their toes. Beware also the random round hale bales, they don’t get out of the way very quickly.

On to West Melton in September then. Canterbury is running it as a ‘twinned’ one day short course event, with points on offer for the championship and trophies available for the stand-alone New Zealand Stadium Championship.

The club’s dedicated track at West Melton is definitely more fun than the catchment forest that surrounds it, which is often used for endurance races but is very rocky and ruins gear. Raana Horan had an experience of that back in the day, belting out of the forest at 180km/h in Big Black and braking for a tee junction only to find his brake lines had been flattened by rocks pelting the underside of the truck. Sweaty-palm moment only resolved by using a firebreak as an escape road and slowing the truck on gear downshifts.

So that’s what’s in store for the championship hopefuls when the national final returns to West Melton a few weeks later. Two days full of offroad racing action, short course and enduro all based at West Melton.