The sport of off road racing has a class of competition for just about every competitors taste and budget, form high-tech buggies costing well into six figures to the the humble paddock basher.
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Off-road racing has a long history in the Macleay Shire with competitors from the local Kempsey Macleay Off Road Club (KMORC) racing all over Australia on a regular basis.
Several KMORC competitors have just returned from Alice Springs where they competed in the iconic Finke Desert Race, a flat-out 460km blast from Alice Springs to the small Aputula community and back.
As well as providing competitors, Kempsey is also home to Racetrans, a specialist transmission and gearbox engineering outfit that supplies its service to a large percentage of the off-road racing fraternity.
KMORC president David Spokes said that at the recent Milbrodale Mountain Classic run near Singleton, half of the field of competing buggies had a Racetrans gearbox.
KMORC member Derek Rose currently leads both the Australian Off Road Championship overall in his Pro-Lite class buggy and his class. Fellow KMORC member Justin Guy sits second in the premier Pro-Buggy class, effectively the Formula 1 racers of the sport.
Pro-Buggies are powered by high-tech Japanese or American V8 or turbocharged engines up to six litres in capacity
While the Pro-Buggies sit at the top of the pyramid, there is plenty of fun and excitement to be had further down the competition food chain with vehicles built for a fraction of the cost of one of the major components in a Pro-Buggy.
KMORC president David Spokes explained the philosophy behind off road competition.
“Really the rules are about safety for the competitors and spectators and fairness of competition within the class, apart from that it is just about anything goes, you could run square wheels if you wanted to,” he said.
“There used to be a culture of getting a few mates together and putting a car together over a few beers in the shed and racing it a couple of times a year, we have sort of lost some of that and that is what we really want to try to encourage again.
“You don’t have to spend a fortune.”
Local racers are currently gearing up for the latest round of the NSW chapionship, the Jim Anderson Earthmoving Kempsey 250 at Dungay Creek, Wittitrin on August 6 and 7.
The Jim Anderson Earthmoving Kempsey 250 is on at Dungay Creek, Wittitrin (about 20km west of Kempsey) on August 6 and 7, admission is free. The race is Round 5 of New South Wales Off Road Championship and Round 2 NSW Premier Long Course Series.
See the KMORC facebook page for more information.
