BFGoodrich Motorsport Australia Off Road Championship (AORC) regular Rick Chambers is hoping to continue his good run of recent form at this weekend’s Alice Springs Off-Road Race Club 12 Hour Enduro.
The Alice Springs local was a late inclusion into the annual enduro after the Can-Am Loveday 400 was postponed until September, leaving him some free time after June’s Tatts Finke Desert Race.
Finke proved quite a successful outing for Chambers too, with he and teammate Brad Geraghty grabbing an impressive one-two in the SXS sport class.
With the Hindmarsh Shire Rainbow Desert Enduro not until the end of August and still not a 100 per cent certainty of going ahead, Chambers believed that the enduro was important to do to keep his momentum going.
“We were booked in to do Loveday but that fell through so we thought the best thing for us now would be to run in the 12-hour event,” Chambers said.
“We are just going there for fun. They have some prize money for the fastest lap, but I don’t think we will get that – although we could have a chance for the overall win.
“We’re very much looking forward to racing though because the 12-hour is good local race and we’ll be using it to stay fresh for Rainbow.
“Our aim this year is to get Brad the class title in the national championship, so when it’s time for Rainbow, we’ll focus on that, but for now we’ll just enjoy the weekend.”
The 2018 national SXS Sport champion and Geraghty have quite formed a partnership since making their debuts just a few years ago.
While they each suffered poor results at the Cobb & Co Hotel St George 399 earlier in March, they are both still first and second in the class standings – Geraghty just slightly ahead on the class standings thanks to some better section results in Queensland.
Now with Rainbow the next round of the championship, Chambers believes that neither have to prepare too much for the round.
“Our cars are pretty well set up. We have long range tanks on them, so there won’t be many things to change for this weekend and for Rainbow,” Chambers said.
“That’s the beauty of a SXS. Once they are set up, they are almost ready to go.
“We all had a bad round at St George and we both did axles, but we changed that and fixed them now, so If we had a good round in Rainbow – it will be great for the AORC.
“Rainbow won’t really wreck our cars. The race that does is Finke, but that’s out of the way and we should be okay for the other rounds as they are not as severe – touch wood.
“A good result in the 12-hour will give us confidence for a good result at Rainbow, which will help us achieve our main goal, which is stirring up John Wisse and beating him to the title.
“We like Rainbow and I think it’s a good track, although the whole AORC calendar has some good events. We just need to keep going to them all and get scoring points.”
