No luck for Hutchison and Curtis at Sun City

The dice didn’t fall well for the Motorite Racing team of Evan Hutchison and new co-driver Darryl Curtis on the Sun City 400 on Saturday. The reigning national champion in the Special Vehicle category and the multiple former national off road and enduro motorcycle champion were out of luck in round four of the Absa South African Off Road Championship, dropping out of Saturday’s race after just 30 km with steering rack problems and a loss of power steering.

The pair, competing in the Motorite Racing BAT Spec 3, were having their first outing together and had made a promising start to Curtis’s first ever car race when they completed Friday’s 60-km Donaldson prologue in fifth place overall, 49 seconds behind the winners, Kallie and Quintin Sullwald in a Spec 4 BAT.

“It was an unexpected mechanical failure – it looks like a seal broke in the rack. I’m just sorry Darryl didn’t get the chance to sit out a full race. He adapted to his new role very well in the prologue and our first and only half hour of racing was going exactly to plan.

Curtis, one of the world’s top extreme enduro motorcycle racers, commented after his brief, but exhilarating first taste of national championship off road car racing: “It was a lot of fun. At least I didn’t have to worry about going over the handlebars!”

Interviewed after the race, Justen Cooper, managing director of Motorite Insurance Administrators, expressed his concern about the off road racing rule changes that effectively sidelined the Motorite Racing Revo 1 in which Hutchison and Achim Bergmann won the special vehicle championship in 2009.

“The fact that we are competing in a three-year-old vehicle as opposed to our state of the art modern Revo 1, built specifically for this championship after being given the green light by Motorsport South Africa’s Off Road Commission to do so for the 2009 season, has left us angry and with a bitter taste in our mouths,” he said.

“Given that over time we have invested close to R2 million in the Revo and, after only one season, are required to make extremely costly and radical changes to the car, rendering it less competitive, remains totally unacceptable to me. All the fuss could have been averted by simply managing the power of the vehicle by changing the restrictor to limit the output of the engine.

“In my opinion, since entering the national off road championship in 2005, Motorite Racing has played a significant role in lifting the profile of the sport and as such our interests should have been considered in greater depth. We believe that the development of the Motorite Revo and its success last year brought a massive amount of positive PR and media coverage for the benefit of the sport as a whole and its series sponsor and not just for our team.

“These facts should have been taken into account before a decision was made that threatens to drive a professional team and sponsor like Motorite Racing away from the sport.

“Justification of our considerable racing budget in the current tough economic times becomes more and more difficult if we cease to perform at the required level. We have shown we can do this with the right equipment. It’s ludicrous that we have a vehicle like the Revo gathering dust in a workshop after only eight races and we are forced to race a three-year-old car.

“We are left considering our options: to withdraw from off road racing completely and concentrate on our other motor sport activities or invest another quarter of a million Rand in the Revo for just one more season.

“Frankly, I am disillusioned and furious about how this has turned out and the fact that no amount of reasonable discussion with the commission has brought us any closer to an amicable solution.”

Motorite Racing is the motor sport division of Motorite Insurance Administrators, the largest independent mechanical breakdown insurance and full maintenance plan service provider and administrator in South Africa.
– Credit: Peter Burroughes Communications