Slick pit work and tyre choice were the key to victory at the Twizel 250 off-road endurance race on Saturday.
Christchurch racer Daniel Powell shrugged off two flat tyres as he raced to victory deep in the McKenzie Country. Powell, a former national off-road racing champion, has spent part of 2011 in the US, racing and searching for a new off-road race car.
But his current car, an American-built Jimco with a turbocharged Nissan 350Z engine, was fast enough - and strong enough - to surge from eighth on the start grid and win the final South Island regional round of the Mickey Thompson New Zealand Offroad Racing Championship outright.
It was a race that would be decided by tyres, with each of the top contenders slowed in the early or later laps by flat tyres and race winner Powell forced to pit after just two laps to replace a flat rear tyre. He rejoined, hunted down the leaders and extended his advantage until the chequered flag, but punctured again on the final lap and lost some time, crossing the line with his car's right-rear tyre shredded into two parts. Powell had been lapping the 10km course in 8 minutes 30 seconds and less, hitting 180 to 200km/h in the faster sections.
Behind him another Christchurch driver, Wayne Moriarty, had pitted to fix a mid-race puncture but made sure of his South Island points lead with a committed drive to second place. The smallest car in the field, an Australian-designed Barracuda "Odyssey" single-seater running a Suzuki Hayabusa motorcycle engine, was third overall in the hands of Tuatapere's Hamish Lawlor.
