First Round Clean Sweep
BY JEM ANSHAW
After a forced year off from racing the 2021 season has started with a clean sweep for off road buggy racer Eric Hume.
Hume is the navigator for Josh Howells in a Jimco twin turbo V6 buggy and they received full points at the St Georges Off Road Championship Round.
“We went into a top ten shootout on the Friday and we won that which is a pretty good feeling coming into Saturdays racing,” he said.
On the Saturday they topped the 93 competitors in a two-lap heat of the 75km track, followed by a challenging three laps of the course on Sunday.
“Josh, the driver, drove an incredible race to get to get to that position so we went into Sunday with a good lead,” Hume recalled.
“We ended up topping the points at the end of the weekend so it was great.”
This course in South East Queensland offered mixed terrain that included tight tree sections that opened out onto vast fields.
There are four rounds to go in the Australian Off-Road Championship, which includes the Fink Desert Rally that Hume and Howells will enter in June.
Hume grew up near an off road racetrack and around 10 years ago got his chance to give it a shot. He is content for now with being in the navigator’s seat.
“You have always got something to do, especially in the navigator’s seat,” he laughed.
“In our racing it is a lot of memory and looking at gauges and that kind of thing too, there is a lot going on.”
Off-Road racing is a timed event with competitors released at different intervals to complete the course.
IN OTHER NEWS Singleton’s Ryan Gilroy celebrated a class victory at the Bathurst 6 Hour last week.
The 19-year-old started 55th on the grid and came through to finish 28th outright and first in class.