Beau Robinson and Shane Hutt have had a strong start to the Black Diamond Drilling Kalgoorlie Desert Race after setting the fastest time in Friday’s Prologue.
A strong field of more than 70 crews featured in Prologue, however it was last year’s winners who proved too strong, thanks to a lightning quick run.
Finishing the day in second place were Polaris Motorsport Australia Off Road Championship (AORC) champions-elect Travis Robinson and Andrew Pinto, with just four seconds separating the two crews.
Travis and Pinto were the first of the two to post their time and showed plenty of pace during their run – so much so, they caught up and passed a car from the previous class.
With Brent Smoothy and Matt Halpin occupying top spot at that point with a time of 7:58.3, Travis and Pinto smashed their teammates by 26 seconds, going straight to the top with a remarkable time of 7:32.5.
Jared Percival and Joshua Hawat then split the two crews with their solid time shortly after, going eight seconds faster than Smoothy, but 18 seconds slower than the 2023 AORC Champions.
However, Beau then had a perfect run to end the day on top of the standings – beating his brother by four seconds.
Both Robinson brothers and Percival’s time saw Extreme 4WD leader Smoothy settle for fourth place, while Troy Higgins and John Simmons rounded out the top five.
A further two pro buggies placed in sixth and seventh respectively, with Dean and Jordan Terry going two seconds faster than the returning Raana Horan and David Neil.
Horan’s run saw him pip Prolite leader Stephen Ketteridge-Hall and Haylee Cowling in what was the closest margin of the session, as just one tenth of a second split the two crews.
View full results from Prologue.
Motorsport Australia WA Off Road Championship (WAORC) champion-elect Adam and Craig Trewhella took out ninth, while Victorians James Cook and Mitch Aucote took out the final place in the top 10.
Such was the dominance of the local representatives, only two of the top 10 drivers came from outside of WA, with Horan and Cook flying the flag for the visitors.
Cook’s top 10 was highly impressive as well, with the next best SXS Motorsport Australia Championship crew being Colin Bevan and Michael Dodds, who were 20 seconds off.
Other notable class results saw Simon Jones and Rochelle Funneman as the fastest Performance 2WD car, Jack and Luke Barnewall win Prologue for the SXS Sports and Glen Taylor and Trinity Stacey take out pole for the Production 4WD class.
The Black Diamond Drilling Kalgoorlie Desert Race continues tomorrow with section one running from 10am AWST.
