KEY POINTS:
Christchurch racer Andrew Thomason is the 2007 New Zealand offroad racing champion - and the first ThunderTruck class racer to take the outright title.
Driving his 410kW Toyota Tundra V8, Thomason won his in-class heats on a farm course at Waimea, near Nelson, on Saturday. He made the most of his truck's four-wheel drive to dominate the class, scoring three wins before rain set in and forced organisers to shorten the day's events.
In improved weather conditions on Sunday, Thomason fought his way from a qualifying position of sixth to win the 169km endurance race, held in pine forest in Eves Valley.
Defending champion Tony McCall, of Manukau, who came to the round with a points deficit after mechanical troubles at Matata in the Bay of Plenty last month, qualified on pole for the enduro and, like Thomason, had won all his heats on Saturday.
The identical performance of the two top drivers meant they preserved the points situation they had faced going into the weekend, and the enduro would decide the title.
McCall made the most of pole position. He dominated the opening laps of the enduro, followed closely by Donn Attwood of West Auckland in an RV Magnum Toyota.
By the fourth lap, McCall was already lapping slower cars as Thomason began to move up through the field. Passing stragglers enabled McCall to open a gap on Attwood, but the advantage would not last.
On a fast straight coming out of the forest, McCall tangled with a slower car and rolled his Cougar, damaging the front suspension and losing three laps. Though he rejoined the race, the crash put paid to his title defence.
Thomason never put a wheel wrong all day, carving through the field to take the lead and winning in a time of 1:56.01.
Second home in the enduro after a gritty drive was another Christchurch driver, Wayne Moriarty, in a Super 1600-class Cougar. The enduro class win gave Moriarty the Super 1600 class national title.
Whakatane's Clive Thornton was third and first class one car home, although McCall's perfect scores in early rounds meant he took the class one national title.
The endurance race course was a mix of narrow forest tracks and high speed logging roads where the top cars were exceeding 160 km/h.
Wet surfaces meant vision was an issue for many, especially those in mid-field, who were forced to follow close behind other racers for many kilometres in order to find a place to overtake.
Thomason said the traffic required patience and fine judgement, especially on the narrow tracks where passing opportunities were few.
The big logging roads were sensational though, he said.
"We were flat out in fifth for minutes at a time, drifting through the big open corners in top gear. It's the first time I've been able to drive the truck like that and it felt great."
Thomason said that even on the logging roads, overtaking was fraught. "We could catch people quite easily, but once you got close there was no vision, just this fine haze of watery mud coating my goggles."
The tough conditions got the better of Christchurch ThunderTruck entries Simon Phillips (Nissan Navara V6) and Bryan Chang (Ford Falcon XR8 turbo).
Phillips went off the track in a remote area and was unable to rejoin, while Chang had fought his way up to second in class when he dropped a wheel over a 6m bank and rolled spectacularly to land upside down in a creek, his helmet brushing the water.
Neither racer was injured, though both were unable to continue.
Nelson driver Darrin Thomason went off the road in his Sport Truck class Toyota Hilux, but was able to continue, while his arch-rival Rick Crosbie brought his Jeep Cherokee home unmarked to win his class.
The Thomason Tundra was not the first truck to race - that distinction goes to the Chev-engined truck of Whakatane's Clive George. Thomason has, however, taken offroad racing to a new level.
The Offroad Racing New Zealand Championship is held over six rounds, with three rounds in the North Island and three in the South Island, before north and south meet at the double-points final round.
Though ThunderTruck fields in the South Island this year are the strongest ever, the Tundra has won every race it has started.
Thomason's title win is the first ever for a four-wheel drive in the history of offroad racing in New Zealand.
Trucks have been too slow, too heavy or too unreliable to match the pace and trace of the anything-goes offroad race cars until now. It took a special truck to take the prize.
The Tundra project began when Thomason was working for expat Kiwi racer Rod Millen in California.
His exposure to the world of offroad racing in the US provided the means and opportunity to develop a race truck unlike anything ever seen in New Zealand before.
Thomason's dream truck is an evolved version of Millen's own Tundra offroad race truck, adapted for New Zealand conditions.
The race truck is powered by a 5.5-litre 410 kW Toyota V8 engine, based on the road-going Tundra's 4.7-litre unit.
It follows US race design philosophy, hanging components from a chrome-molybdenum steel space frame tube chassis, tucking the engine into the passenger space and mounting it low and slightly offset beneath the feet of the navigator.
