Toyota wins ultra-tough Desert Race

Published Jun 24, 2013

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Works Toyota crew Anthony Taylor and Dennis Murphy have notched up their second consecutive win of the season on the Kalahari 1000 Desert Race, Round 4 of the SA Cross Country Championship.

Final results not only gave Toyota its second consecutive Desert Race victory, but lifted Taylor and Murphy into a tie at the top of the championship with former champions Chris Visser and Japie Badenhorst, in the factory Ford Racing Ranger, who finished third.

Sandwiched between the two works crews after an impressive weekend were North West pair Hugo de Bruyn and Henri Hugo who were never out of the top three.

Provisional scoring now sees Taylor and Murphy, and Visser and Badenhorst locked together at the top of the Production Vehicle and premier SP Class championships. Each crew has 85.5 points with the battle lines drawn for the four remaining events of the season.

Taylor said: "I came close to winning last year so this is a bonus. We obviously had a good weekend but the rest of the season is going to be interesting."

RUNNING BATTLE

Taylor and Murphy fought a running battle with De Bruyn and Hugo throughout the only marathon event on the Cross Country Championship calendar. The factory team took the lead late on Saturday when De Bruyn and Hugo picked up a puncture and then dictated matters from the front.

Taylor and Murphy eventually ended up eight and a half minutes clear of De Bruyn and Hugo, as the North West crew came under a little pressure in the closing stages, with Visser and Badenhorst closing to within 64 seconds.

The Ford crew, in turn, only had a minute and 25 seconds to spare over fourth-placed Duncan Vos and Rob Howie in the second works Toyota Hilux. Vos and Howie are the reigning SA champions and won the 2012 Desert Race ahead of Taylor and Chris Birkin.

The top five were rounded out by the BMW X3 pair of Christiaan du Plooy and veteran former SA champion Hennie ter Stege who came out of retirement for this race. Ter Stege replaced du Plooy's regular navigator, Henk Janse van Vuuren, whose wife is expecting a baby.

After starting the day in third, Nissan Navara crew Thomas Rundle and Juan Mohr ran into gearbox problems and gradually slipped down the field to finish sixth. There was plenty of compensation for the pair, however, who won the Dakar Challenge and a free entry for the 2014 Dakar Rally in South America.

Steady performances took Johan van Staden and Mike Lawrenson (Toyota Hilux) and Hennie de Klerk and Keith Solomon, in a BMW X3, into seventh and eighth. The consistent Terence Marsh and Gerhard Schutte (Nissan Navara) ground out a ninth place finish, and a terrific performance saw the brother and sister combination of Jacques and Lizelle van Tonder round out the top 10 in their Ford Ranger for their best result to date.

CLASS D

Young North West crew Jason Venter and Vincent van Allemann (Toyota Hilux) went back to the top of the Class D championship with their third win of the season. Closest challengers Jack and Sarel Oosthuizen (Land Rover) and Mpumalanga brothers Johan and Werner Horn (Toyota Land Cruiser) were among the crews to fall by the wayside.

Reigning champions Dirk Putter and Koos Claasens were also the lone finishers in Class E. They were the last of the classified finishers but 12th overall in the Production Vehicle category was another impressive performance from the pair who consolidated their championship lead.

SPECIAL VEHICLES

Father and son pair, Herman and Wichard Sullwald won a race of attrition to take Special Vehicle honours. There were only five classified finishers with the Sullwalds, in their Stryker, scoring their first Desert Race win and skyrocketing to the top of the Special vehicle and Class A championships.

The win also erased an unpleasant memory for the duo, a couple of years ago, spent a cold and uncomfortable night in the desert after a mechanical breakdown.

The huge attrition rate saw unfancied crews fill out the top five places with local driver Keith du Toit and Keith Solomon, in a BAT, finishing second. Third were Swaziland-based driver John Thomson and Maurice Zermatten, in a Zarco, who also won Class P with both crews scoring their best results to date.

The Sullwalds were more than 75 minute ahead of du Toit and Solomon who, in turn, had about five minutes to spare on Thomson and Zermatten.

Rounding out the top five were Desert Race debutants Daniel and Louw Zeelie, in a Porter, and Philip de Vries and Johan Viljoen, also in a Porter.

HEAVY CASUALTIES

Six of the seven crews who went into the race ahead of the Sullwalds in the overall championship left Botswana without scoring a point. Only de Vries and Viljoen added to their tally, and that saw the Sullwalds move into a provisional 2.5 point lead over reigning SA champions Evan Hutchison and Danie Stassen who were racing section one casualties in their BAT Viper.

Nick and Ryan Harper (BAT Venom) and KwaZulu-Natal crew Clint Gibson and Gary Campbell (Porter) were also racing section one casualties. They were joined by overnight leaders Colin Matthews and Alan Smith (CR3) and former SA champions and Desert Race winners Quintin and Kallie Sullwald in their BAT Venom as the race took its toll.

A broken input shaft put paid to an impressive performance by Matthews and Smith, with second Sullwald crew falling by the wayside late in the race.

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