Hutchison has it in the hat

The drive was typically gritty in their class A BAT Viper. Finishing fifth was good enough for them to clinch their second successive championship and it was Hutchison’s fourth national title and Motorite Racing’s fifth in nine years.

The V8-engined space frame special, in which they won two of the season’s eight rounds and finished on the podium three times, is the latest in a series of five cross country vehicles specially made for the team that have won the prestigious championship in their debut year.

The defending champions led the point standings by 12.5 from their nearest challengers with a maximum of 25 points on offer.

They were sixth in the 63km qualifying race that determined the start order for the following 314km main race, and negotiated the hectic and dangerous opening laps well to be third at the 38km mark. But a puncture dropped them back to fifth, over four minutes behind the leaders.

Hutchison said, “We had a tough time today and were not sure we could pull it off after the puncture in loop one and then the fan belt problem in loop two. We lost over 10 minutes removing the old fan belt and fitting the new one and had to watch two cars pass us. Then, just to remind us that it’s never over until it’s over, we had another puncture five kilometres from the finish. Fortunately we were far enough ahead of the next car to make it to the end ahead of it – but only just. The gap was 12 seconds!”

The final result was enough to give the champions a comfortable lead of 13.5 points over championship runners-up and winners of the final round, Philip de Vries and Johan Viljoen.

“This has been one of the most intense championships I’ve contested. We’ve had six different winners in eight races and we were fortunate to win twice. At the end of the day our Motorite Racing BAT Viper proved to be the car to beat and we are very grateful to our hard-working technical crew for a superb job done.”