Vos wins Nissan’s ninth successive off road championship
Wednesday, September 2, 2009 Posted by: Matt
Vos wins Nissan’s ninth successive off road championship
— South Africa Off-road Championship —
Gauteng, August 29 – Duncan Vos and Ralph Pitchford (Donaldson Nissan Navara) are the 2009 champion driver and co-driver in this year’s Absa National Off Road Championship for production vehicles. They secured their titles, Vos’s fourth and Pitchford’s second, with two rounds remaining when they finished eighth overall in the Highveld 400 in Gauteng on Saturday afternoon. It was Nissan Motorsport’s ninth successive championship win since the company switched from circuit racing to off road racing in 2001.
Such has been the domination of Vos and Pitchford in this year’s championship – they have won four of the six events to date – that their poorest result of the season so far was enough to put them out of reach of their nearest rivals. Vos was the defending champion driver and has now won the title three years in succession.
The Highveld 400, which started from Carnival City with a 99-km prologue on Friday and finished at Carnival City after two racing legs of 134 km on Saturday. Terence Marsh and Pieter Groenewald (Regent Racing Nissan Navara) were third, 29 min 17 sec behind the winners and 14 min 41 sec ahead of Nissan Motorsport’s Ivar Tollefsen and Quin Evans (Donaldson Nissan Navara).
Vos and Pitchford, who had started fourth among the production vehicles on Saturday after suffering a puncture on the prologue and losing further time beached on a disused dam wall, reached the mandatory service stop at the halfway point in second place. On the second loop they hit a rock in the dust as they tried to take the lead and suffered a broken bolt on the steering arm. They limped very slowly some 70 km to the finish, completing the loop 58 minutes slower than they had done earlier in the morning.
Ivar Tollefsen and Quin Evans, who had been second in the championship at the start of the event, lost all further hope of challenging for the title when they started 47th among the combined production and special vehicle field on Saturday after losing 22 minutes stuck on the same dam wall as their team-mates. Despite heavy dust which made overtaking difficult, they battled their way back into the top 10 by the halfway stage and did well to finish in the top four. They are now third in the championship and still in the running for the runner-up spot.
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