Hilux win signals new off-road era
2010-03-23 08:36
The Adenco 400, the opening round of the 2010 ABSA Off Road Championship, saw Chris Visser and Japie Badenhorst take the honours in the Special Production vehicle category in their Toyota Hilux.
As ever this season opener, held in the Darling area of the Western Cape, was a tough event with only 23 of the 48 starters completing the full 400 kilometre race distance.
Toyota Hilux SPs dominated the running in the SP category from the outset with Visser winning the prologue followed by the similar vehicles of Hannes Grobler/Hennie ter Stege, Anthony Taylor/Robin Houghton, Ramon and Mariet Bezuidenhout, and Gary Bertholdt/Andre Vermeulen filling the next four positions after the 95km first leg of the event on Friday.
A scant 44 seconds separated the first three competitors at this stage.
With just four seconds between them it didn’t take too long for Anthony Taylor to make a move on Hannes Grobler to take his Castrol Team Toyota Hilux through to second place and start working on reducing Chris Visser’s lead. That challenge would remain unfulfilled though as Taylor was forced to retire halfway through the first 150 kilometre lap on Saturday.
Chris Visser gave notice of the speed he was capable of in the last event of 2009 and carried that performance through into the new season as he won going away from Gary Bertholdt, Hannes Grobler, and Ramon Bezuidenhout who had a close race for third in category, eventually finishing in that order just 90 seconds apart. Fifth was the Nissan Navara of Michael Whitehouse and Matthew Carlson.
“It was a really good result for the independent Toyota competitors that showed just how the Hilux has developed race winning pace over the past 12 months,” says Castrol Team Toyota team principal, Glyn Hall. “I’m really disappointed that our works entries weren’t able to join in the fun at the front of the field though.
“In preparation for the Adenco 400 we made a number of changes to the Hilux that worked really well in testing with no evidence of any component issues. Amongst those was a change to the suspension that both Duncan (Vos) and Anthony (Taylor) felt made the vehicle more stable and easier to drive.
“Unfortunately in the event itself both of our Hilux SPs had the same problem with a damper mounting at around the same distance into the race. This is a development issue that, despite extensive testing, only became evident in the rough conditions that are experienced on this event.”
