The Hindmarsh Shire Rainbow Desert Enduro served up an exciting finish to the 2018 BFGoodrich CAMS Australian Off Road Championship.
SR Racing’s Shannon and Ian Rentsch were crowned the 2018 BFGoodrich CAMS Australian Off Road Champions, claiming an amazing ninth title.
The finale was also the decider for the 2018 AORC Class Champions. See the final points score here.
In an outstanding year, Toby Whateley and Simon Herrmann finished second outright in the AORC and claimed the super-competitive SXS Turbo class title.
Whateley had to withstand a spirited challenge from Jeff McNiven and Andrew Reid at Rainbow, NcNiven winning the class on the weekend, more than three minutes ahead of Whateley and Herrmann.
Alan Dixon and Johnny O’Connor prevailed in the Prolite Class Championship after a great battle with Ally Howells and Sean Marsden across all three rounds.
Just eight points separated the teams heading to Rainbow, but with Howells unable to finish Saturday’s two-lap race with a broken steering arm, Dixon brought the Moneybox Racing Prolite home for the class round win and claimed the Prolite title in the process.
In the SXS Sport Class Rick Chambers and Patrick Geraghty were able to hold onto their points lead to claim the class title. It wasn’t easy however, with rivals Zachary Marsh and James Clarke winning the SXS Sport class on the weekend to grab much needed points.
Knowing that a finish was essential to claim class title honours, Chambers and Geraghty were the last finishers of the five-lap, 375-kilometre race on Sunday, completing the course is a gruelling 7:55:32.
Known as ‘King of the Off Road’, Geoff Pickering claimed his 13th Production 4WD class title at Rainbow, with Dylan Watson in the navigator seat. Pickering’s year didn’t finish as he would have liked however when he suffered a rare DNF on Sunday. Only 24 kilometres into lap one, he broke a lower ball joint in the right-front of the Pajero, courtesy of a large hole, and speared into a tree. Thankfully, both Pickering and Watson were unhurt.
Brett Taylor completed a come-from-behind title win in the Extreme 2WD class. After a steady run at Finke, Taylor was out to close the points gap to class leader David Fellows. With Fellows not contesting the Rainbow Desert Enduro, Taylor put in a great run to finish 13th outright and fourth in class, enough to hand him the Extreme 2WD class title.
Hans Werner Zettl took out the Super 1650 Class Championship and Paul and Michelle Malt successfully defended their title in the Extreme 4WD class.
