It’s hard enough simply finishing the Woodhill 100, let alone winning NZ’s toughest off-road race... as Waikato ace Paul Smith found out first-hand this year.
Ten laps of fast and free-flowing racing on rocky forest roads where the cars touched 200 km/h, two laps of ‘hard yakka’ as the slower sandy tracks under the forest canopy turned choppy, and the chequered flag at this year’s North Harbour Woodhill 100 indeed fell on Hamilton racer Paul Smith’s Jimco class one car.
Smith had to work – long and hard – for it too, improving from a start position of 60 and overtaking 59 other cars to do so.
It began in silence. Almost 80 cars lined up along a skid road among cut-over pine blocks, drivers with their heads bowed or looking straight ahead. Race commentator Paul “Dink” Madden called a minute’s silence in memory of the late Alan Tutt, patron of the sport in New Zealand, life member and former president of Auckland Offroad Racing Club.
Then the call: “Ladies and gentlemen, start your engines!”
That small Indy-style bit of drama kicked off an epic 240km sprint through the forest for leaders Jardyne Lammers and Tony McCall and the pursuing pack which included Paul Smith who began carving his way up through the field from the very first corner.
McCall passed Lammers, who went out with two flat tyres – front and rear left, suggesting contact with a tree stump. Then McCall was out – this cruellest of races had found another way to disappoint its most dedicated follower.
A mob of deer flashed out of roadside scrub – McCall, travelling at speed, had no time to react and was out of the race, the BSL Chev’s front suspension and steering smashed. Aiming to become the most successful Woodhill contender of all time, McCall had stretched out a lead of five minutes and had set the fastest time of the day, a 12.54.370 on the lap before he crashed out.
South Islander Nevil Basalaj, who had qualified third but dropped away in the mad melee of the opening lap, now grabbed and held the lead; until his big Jimco V6 shut down and refused to restart.
Former race winner John Morgan then came through from second place to enjoy a brief run in the lead – one lap later he too was gone. Karl Fenton in his late model Jimco Chev now took the lead and held it over laps 8 and nine. Behind him, Smith was quietly eroding his lead. Into the final two laps, Smith, though second on the road, had destroyed Fenton’s advantage. The pair held position to the flag, but it was Smith’s race by more than two minutes.
Visibly fatigued by the punishing drive “and so many cars to overtake”, Smith said he hadn’t really been sure until race control confirmed the win. He had found the final 40 km harder than the 200 that had gone before.
“The early laps were fast, but then the sand tracks became incredibly difficult in those final two laps, they had really dug out so I couldn’t keep a lot of speed in there,” he said.
Only 12 cars out of 78 finished the whole 12 lap distance.
Big bangers predominate
The second round of the 2019 New Zealand Offroad Racing Championship, the Woodhill attracted a 22-strong field of the spectacular ‘unlimited’ class one race cars from north and south – one of them coming all the way from Otago. The unlimited-class entry was the most numerous in more than two decades. Smith’s four cylinder turbocharged Jimco was one of only a few in that class running anything less than a race-tuned V6 turbo or V8 engine.
The unlimited class one race cars were all through the qualifying grid list, but as the race began they also fell out of contention in numbers: Alan Butler was the first to retire, out on lap one; Lammers and McCall were both out after two laps. Jacob Brownlees had travelled from Christchurch to compete and completed four laps before retiring with engine damage. Kevin Clive in the second Brownlees car also retired. Karl Fenton, John Morgan and Nelson racer Nevil Basalaj all put in aggressive drives and all led the race, the latter leading the race for three laps with a margin of four-five minutes before slowing for the fateful pit stop during which his car cut out and would not restart, putting him out of the race.
Rob Ryan recovered from a start position of 13, chased up toward the leaders, was briefly P4 then fell back and went out with an increasingly smoky engine.
More fortunate was Dan Fisher (Nelson), circulating at a consistent pace and recovering from a disastrous qualifying lap to eventually finish eighth overall. The southern raider logged speeds of 185km/h on the treacherously wet forest roads and “got shaken to hell and back” in the sand tracks.
He said the slower tracks cut up badly in the final two laps but was well pleased with his first Woodhill.
“After a very big stuff up in our qualifying run and starting in 53rd position for the race, both David and myself knew it was going to be very busy with a lot of passing to be done to get to the front. Just epic!” He said afterward.
The unlimited class also featured its first female competitor in years, Davena Fraser in husband Mike’s single-seater Toyota V8 race car. Though the 2019 event was her first ever off-road race, Fraser put in a solid drive from a start position of 66 and came home 33rd overall.
Favourites fall out of truck battle
The Woodhill 100 is a sprint enduro, but it can be won in a truck. Raana Horan (absent this year) has won it twice in his massive Nissan Titan V8.
This year the fastest of the trucks, Malcolm Langley’s Toyota Tundra V8, went out when he tore oil lines loose from his transmission. His class rival in 4WD Bits class 8 was Nick Hall, who qualified 29th, stormed all the way up to ninth overall and a handy class lead before an ‘off’’ saw him perched on another car’s wheel, unable to get free.
Mr Consistency, Grant “Rowdy” Rosenburg (Palmerston North), put in a solid drive to win 4WD Bits class 8 for ‘unlimited’ trucks and four wheel drives. It was his second class win at Woodhill.
Brendon Robbers won class six for Winch Challenge trucks undisputed: there were no other entries in the class.
Class four for modified ‘sport’ trucks was taken out by Waiuku’s Gerrad Chitty in a Toyota Hilux with Richie Ryder close behind, also in a Hilux.
UTVs: McKay magnificent
Many may have expected Tauranga’s Dyson Delahunty to lead and win JG Civil U class for standard UTVs. Driving the new single-seater Polaris, he was lining up a class win when a discarded tear-off vision strip blocked the air vent to the car’s drive belt, causing it to overheat and fail. The U class battle was emphatically between these two, with Matamata’s Dion Edgecombe watching for the chance to slip through and own the class. Edgecombe, like Delahunty, is running the new single-seater Polaris this year and needs every point he can muster after losing a wheel at the opening round.
Delahunty was leading the class when he went out and was classififed 21st overall; Roger McKay charged on to take fourth overall, Edgecombe coming home tenth.
In JG Civil S class, the early running was made by Joel Giddy and Brian Rutgers but the class win went to Mike Small, who finished 11th overall and now leads the class for the series. Second in class was Andrew Williams, while third in a hard-charging run was Dave Templeman, making a return to the sport after a long absence. Templeman and son Daynom have both won this race in the past.
But the day belonged without dispute to the new king of Woodhill, Paul Smith, after an epic drive that left rivals scattered all through southern end of the forest. Attention now shifts to the south for the opening regional round at West Melton.
