Archive for May, 2011
Fellows Home & Hosed at Hyden
A freak downpour of rain at the finish line could do nothing to dampen the celebrations in the Peter Kittle Motorsport camp, after reigning Australian Off Road Champions David Fellows and Mark Bergamin claimed victory at the ARB Pinjarra Engineering Hyden 450 at Easter. It was Fellows and Bergamins second win in as many years at the opening round of the season and it paves the way for their AORC title defence.
Fellows set the scene during the prologue and top ten shoot out on Saturday. Initally putting the #1 Peter Kittle Motorsports Jimco into third place in the prologue, with a time of 10min 43.73 seconds, before leap frogging Travis Robinson and Dan Auricht to claim pole position during the top ten shoot out. With the twin turbo Toyota V6 fully spooled, Fellows slashed almost 20 seconds off his original prologue time, posting a 10:24.38.
Over the course of Sunday’s four 112km laps, Fellows was engaged in an epic battle with the Outerbounds Racing Jimco’s of Travis and Beau Robinson. Travis Robinson gained the early upperhand and led by almost a minute at the end of the first section. But in the final two laps Fellows hit back. Slicing 19 seconds from Robinson on lap three and then made a late charge for the lead. Not far from the finish line Fellows passed a devastated Travis Robinson, who was stopped on the sidelines with a broken axle. Fellows and Bergamins final lap of 1hr 09min 18.80sec was the quickest loop of Smithy’s Place on the weekend and he went on to greet the chequered flag in first position.
Andrew Kittle put the demons of last years Hyden 450 behind him to finish seventh outright in the #14 Peter Kittle Motorsport Jimco. Andrew has teamed with his brother Matthew for the 2011 season and the ARB Pinjarra Engineering Hyden 450 was Matthews AORC debut. The brothers gelled quickly as a team, backing up their second outright placing at the inaugural Dennis Zaglas Memorial Short Course a few weeks ago with a solid top ten performance at the opening round of the championship.
The next event on the radar for Peter Kittle Motorsports is the Tattersall’s Finke Desert Race on the Queens Birthday long weekend in June. With a hat trick of wins under his belt for the team, David Fellows will targeting a fourth consecutive “King of the Desert” title when the green flag drops at the start of Australia’s biggest desert race.
