Without any experience in the passenger seat at an off-road event, Singleton’s Simon Bestmann recently jumped at the chance to give navigating an ultimate class buggy.
Motorsport runs in his family and when his uncle Clayton gave the speedway racer a call up it didn’t take much arm bending to get him on a plane to Queensland.
“Unfortunately his navy, which is normally his partner or his son, had a few things going on and left the vacancy and he gave me the call, said would I be interested? I would have rocks in my head to knock that back once in a lifetime opportunity,” Simon laughed.
“We headed up to the Don River Dash 300 up in North Queensland in Bowen, for a round of the national off-road series, with two days of racing, 150k each day, 300 overall.”
They were one of 80 entries and after qualifying where they put the fastest cars to the back, they started the first race in 72 place and finished 42ns.
At the end of day two they came away with an outright placing of 26th outright and sixth in class which is a result they were really pleased with.
They were running a LS2 V8 motor in a South African built Batwing car, one of only two on the east coast of Australia.
“It’s the best thing I think I’ve ever done outside of winning a race, the experience was mind blowing,” Simon said.
“Doing 150 kilometres an hour up a riverbed, just hanging on, hoping that nothing sends you upside down, was pretty adrenaline rushing.”
When discussing how he went navigating, Simon shared they use a fish finder to map the course so he was just keeping an eye on that and looking out for unexpected obstacles, as well as reassuring the driver.
“I had dwelled on it for about a week beforehand, wondering how I can do this after being in motorsport for 15 years and never not been the one in control, but by the time we were about five minutes into the first lap of the first race that feeling was gone,” Simon shared.
“I knew the car, how it handled, how he drove it and went from being worried about not being in control to working out what can I do to make him go faster.”
Simon wanted to thank Bestmann Racing Team, Black Cat Civil and Incite Graphics for supporting this opportunity that is one he will not forget any time soon.
-JEM ANSHAW
