Arb Off Road Racing – Waikerie Riverland Wrap Up By Dutch Courage Racing
The curtain has fallen on the 2018 running of the Waikerie Riverland Enduro and the conditions beat a lot of competitors. An extremely dry year at Waikerie made it tough to confidently drive at speed through dust which at times was so heavy we could barely see the front of our bonnet. Less than 1/3 of the 75 starters made it the full race distance, one car burned to the ground and others were badly damaged. The Waikerie Riverland Endro is the home event of the DCR team and we set some goals around an enjoyable weekend rather than results and it paid dividends!
Waking up at 6 am Saturday, first order of business was a campfire to cut through the -2.6 degree air! A couple of final checks on tyre pressures, fluid levels and things like that had us starting prologue around mid-pack. After a very skatey and rocky prologue, we were in the top third.
Sunday morning managed to be a quite balmy 2 degrees which was very pleasant! A final check of tyre pressures, wheel nuts and fluids and into the line-up ready for racing at 9 am. A “floating” pit break (allowing us to take a break at the end of any lap) allowed us to make some contingency plans in case we were stuck in dust. Luckily for us, the 2 cars starting in front broke down inside 20km of the first lap giving us a dust free run. We drove at a reserved pace, trying not to shred the Mickey Thompson Tyres on the limestone and sharp rocks and also to conserve fuel so we could get as many laps in free of dust as we could. 3 laps done (195 kms) we decided to come in rather than risk running out of fuel. The team jumped into action, swapping front tyres to rear and finding a couple of minor issues. With them resolved, my 15 year old daughter Millie jumped in the passenger’s seat for the last 2 laps. Time to push hard and stretch our class lead. With a lot of the field already retired, we once again had things pretty dust free (apart from a couple of lapped competitors). We extended our lead to 2 minutes and came in 15th outright and class winners.
The truck held up amazingly which is a true testament to the products we use.
A bit of friendly banter with competitors forced us to shoot a quick video, have a look here
it certainly got a lot of laughs and comments from other competitors and spectators which is what our team really enjoys (not to mention the added exposure!) we also had a couple of supporters of the team send us some video footage at the infamous road jump they shot with their phones. We usually hit this jump at 155-160 kmh!
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