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Mmbatho 500km National Off road Race – Sponsored by Oven Fresh Biscuits: The fourth round of the Off road National Championship took place this past weekend in Mmbatho, with 65 different cars competing in this event. Seeded Time Trials began on Friday afternoon at 13h00 with the Nissan production vehicles heading the line of cars. Due to the very dry and dusty conditions, each car was given a 2 minute dust gap between them.
Brandon Harcus and Gary Bertholdt in their 2003 3.5L V6 Nissan BAT were seeded 4th in qualifying and completed the 40km time trail in 24min 21sec, 16 seconds behind Gerald Mundell and Billy Bond in their Prolong BAT, thus being the Prolong’s second pole position this year. The start of the race was extremely difficult as the dust was chronic and no wind to help the dust clear. The 2 lap race was divided into three sections: 1st Section being very open and fast, 2nd Section being very tight and rocky, 3rd Section was extremely fast. Brandon and Gary followed Gerald for the first 90km until the Prolong Team picked up a puncture in the rocky section and Brandon managed to open up an 8 minute gap between themselves and the rest of the chasing pack. Their pit stop was not the best and Brandon managed to run the camera man over (apologies). After refuelling and swapping drivers they left the pits and managed to get lost for 3 minutes before finding the correct route. With a 5 minute lead and 100km to the finish, a rock jumped out and bit their back wheel. After an extremely quick wheel change, they still held a slender lead over Atang in his Jimco. Due to the dust, it would have been quite easy to maintain the lead but unfortunately they had a second puncture with 60km to the finish (Ran out of spare wheels) and limped home to take second place. Gerald Mundell and Billy Bond took third place and an overall commanding lead in the 2003 Championships. This was an extremely good event for BAT overall and we would like to congratulate Clint Gibson on a maiden victory in his brand new 2.0L Nissan Class B BAT. |
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