While Mel and Liam Brandle celebrated their first BFGoodrich Motorsport Australia Off Road Championship crown this year, there are plenty of class champions within the AORC from season 2024.
Beau Robinson and Shane Hutt were in the box seat to win the outright title for much of the year, until reliability issues plagued the team across the Gold City 450 and Kalgoorlie Desert Race. The West Australians though walk away with the Extreme 2WD class crown, and perhaps more importantly their first Finke Desert Race victory in 2024.
Max Bradley and Sean Beck made the most of the ‘points and a half’ format at Kalgoorlie, with 900 points on offer instead of the usual 600 – the pair vaulted up the leaderboard to win Extreme 4WD in Kalgoorlie and for the year in one hit.
Persistence and loyalty paid off for Michael Shipton and Paul Chorlton. Bringing their Performance 2WD to all five rounds of the AORC in 2024, there were duly rewarded with the class honours in the process.
The Pro Buggy honours were split in 2024, with Jared Percival an outside chance to even with the outright title on the final day in Kalgoorlie if disaster had struck the Brandles. In the end, Jared Percival would be left content with Driver honours in Pro Buggy in 2024. Last year’s SXS Champion Navigator, Mitch Aucote was awarded the Pro Buggy Navigator crown in his and James Cook’s first season in the class.
Taking on 14-time Production 4WD Champion Geoff Pickering, who this season retired his trusty Mitsubishi Pajero to develop an all-new Ford Raptor, Norman Parker and Mark Robinson’s reliable Toyota Land Cruiser delivered the goods for the pair to win Production 4WD in 2024 – taking on four out of five rounds in 2024, and victorious in three.
This season was also the first time since the father-daughter team of Matt and Kerri Martin in 2017 took out the outright AORC title aboard a Prolite. The family spirit continued in 2024, with the father-son pairing of Mel and Liam Brandle also victorious in both the outright AORC crown and Prolite class title.
Paul Tinga and Daniel Kelsey were also rewarded for making the trek to three out of five rounds in 2024, the most of anyone in Sportslite, to also win the 2024 class.
Super 1650 honours were also split between two crews, with Brad Geraghty the victorious driver after taking on four out of five rounds in 2024 – with Cameron Chambers the winning navigator.
Queensland’s Ross Newman also shares the SXS Sport class honours, with Newman the winning driver and Tasmanian Jack Briggs the class champion navigator.
Brothers James and Michael Mogford were victorious in the Transportable Shade Sheds SXS Championship, and were naturally the AORC SXS Pro champions.
