Top teams step up for 2011 Denny's Woodhill 100

Top teams step up for 2011 Denny's Woodhill 100

20 May 2011

• First round of new Hammer Down Crown four race enduro series
• 31st Woodhill 100 longest-running race in sport’s local history
• New American race cars to the fore
• Strong international interest in race
• Major sponsor Denny’s signs up for a second year

The toughest one-day offroad endurance race in New Zealand gets faster for 2011 and becomes the first round of the inaugural Hammer Down Crown four-round endurance race series.

The 2011 Denny’s Woodhill 100 is considered a “sprint enduro” and will take the fastest racers in the sport on a 210 kilometre high speed thrash through pine forests at Woodhill, northwest of Auckland, on Sunday June 5.

The race is the longest, fastest one day enduro in New Zealand. Organisers have confirmed major sponsor Denny’s has signed up for a second year and there is strong interest from Australian race teams.

The simultaneous announcement of Auckland Offroad Racing Club’s new Hammer Down endurance race series puts the Woodhill in the spotlight as teams work to maximise class points and develop their race plans around the four events of the series, which carries a prize purse of $1,500.

The series enables racers to accumulate class points at the Woodhill, the Gwavas forest endurance race in Hawkes Bay a month later and the two-day Taupo 1000 held August 20-21. All teams arrive at the final round, the Peter Howell Memorial race at Maramarua on September 25, with an equal chance at outright series victory.

Also kicking off at Woodhill is a youth category endurance race series. The Hawkeswood Mining Kiwitrucks enduro series is backed by rally driver and recent offroad racing convert Andrew Hawkeswood. It caters to the new breed in offroad racing: rising race stars aged 7-15 who compete in a tiered one-make race championship. The Kiwitruck racers will have a 30 minute endurance race of their own on a special course at the Woodhill start-finish compound. Their race starts at 7.45 am, and the trucks will also do a parade lap at the start-finish area of the main race immediately before the flag drops for the big race.

They will also race at other endurance events during the year and the series finishes with two races at the Taupo 1000.

For many of the sport’s leading teams, the race is also the perfect – and only – test for the coming Taupo 1000 two-day enduro – rated the fastest and toughest offroad challenge in the southern hemisphere.

The Woodhill also pits new American technology against the most successful Kiwi race car designs and teams. Old Glory – the USA’s stars and stripes flag – could be proudly flown at Woodhill podium this year with two leading unlimited-class teams running the very latest US-built desert race cars.

Recent Woodhill winners and defending Taupo 1000 champions Clive and Max Thornton of Whakatane will be top contenders in their new Desert Dynamics two-seater race car with Chev V8 power; Mt Albert’s Alan Butler has finished upgrading his American-built Millennium single-seater from Honda power to a race-prepared Mitsubishi Evo turbo engine.

Locally-built race vehicles likely to challenge for the win include last year’s race winning Nissan Titan V8, a supercharged V8 powered four wheel drive race truck built by South Head’s Raana Horan. Horan is aiming to repeat his historic 2010 result, which marked the first outright win at Woodhill for a truck team.

Another western team will bring a new unlimited-class car and one of the smallest race cars in the field to this year’s race. West Harbour’s Greg Hogg also has a new V8-engined unlimited class car that will make its competition debut at the race. His son Taine Carrington will race at Woodhill for the first time – aged just 13 – in a VW-engined class 7 Challenger car.

Beachlands racer Neville Smith is hoping to enter his Cougar Honda turbo if he has been able to repair the differential he destroyed at the first round of the national championship. The advanced Cougar makes extensive use of carbon fibre and composite materials and is the ultimate expression of the race design that has dominated New Zealand offroad racing for two decades.

This year’s Woodhill 100 may be an international race. The reputation of this tough one-day sprint enduro has spread across the Tasman and Dixon family team (Roly and son Tom) are working to get their Chev V8-powered unlimited class car to the race.

Organiser Donn Attwood says racers come to Woodhill with many aims. For the Dixons and many others, the Woodhill is the perfect way to test for Taupo. For others it is an annual obsession, the race that few can expect to finish, much less win.

“The blend of fast open logging highways with rough sandy tracks through the trees are either a racer’s dream or a nightmare. You can be blasting down Coast Road at 180 km/h or more and then swerve off into a goat track barely wider that your car, then be back to top speed again in a matter of seconds. This is the event that everyone wants to win because they know the best in the sport come here with that aim,” he says.

A first look at the race vehicles will be open to the public at the safety scrutineering on Saturday June 4. Scrutineering for both the main race and for the Hawkeswood Mining Kiwitrucks field will be held at Pinepac Kumeu with the main race entries present between 1.00 pm and 3.00 pm and the Kiwitrucks will be scrutineered from 3.00 pm onward.

On Sunday June 5 the 2011 Denny’s Woodhill 100 gets under way with qualifying at 8.30 am and a race start time of 11.00 am.

Access to the race course is at Trig Road South Head, signposted from Kumeu. Gates open at 7:30 am. Kids are racing 7:45 am till 8:15 am.

ENDS

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