Nick Hall is celebrating as the 2025 CT Civil New Zealand offroad racing champion. It is the second time he has won the title, the first being in 2017, and he is one of only two 2WD/4WD truck racers to have won the title in its 42-year history.
It was anyone’s title to grab after series points leader and defending champion Carl Ruiterman withdrew in the week before the race. He’d had surgery and was recovering, but then a fall put him on crutches, unable to race.
As racing started, there were a number of drivers clearly in contention, including Cam Paton, Neil Coutts, Nick Hall and Daynom ‘Slim’ Templeman.
The latter was driving his unlimited class two-seater V8 car with which he had won the Woodhill 100 in June.
“It started off pretty good with us taking first in the first heat race and leading the second, until Kong stopped coming up to the last lap – it took us the rest of the day to find the problem, which turned out to be a broken wire to the crank angle sensor.”
With that repaired he was able to start the second day’s enduro, but had dropped well down the points table.
Meanwhile, Connor Nicklin was having a “massive” weekend in an equally massive class three field.
“Class three cars line the grid, seven rows, three wide. Starting dead last in the field in our first race, we worked our way up to seventh in five laps which went very quickly. Second race we started at the back again and after nearly having a big roll over kept driving hard to finish seventh again. In the third race we started off the front and after some great battles drove it home to win, very clean racing by all. Fourth race we started mid-pack, ducked and weaved our way to come home in second place.”
In the unlimited truck class, the big Pro4 V8 trucks of Richard Crabb and Gary Baker were wheel to wheel on the first day, but neither was in line for championship points. Nick Hall was in line, and never let the two big trucks out of his sight.
He took a strong in-class points balance into the second day of racing.
With leading racers striking trouble, the second day’s 150km forest enduro would decide the outright title.
Daynom Templeman had pole courtesy of the fastest lap time of the short course racing.
The 50-strong field got cleanly away into the forest, but a crash on the first lap forced a full restart. Fergus Crabb had flipped Big Trouble in a narrow uphill section of the track, forcing the stoppage. The car climbed a bank on the outside of a gentle turn, then went up and over, finishing up sideways on its roof.
The restart was without incident, then on lap five Daynom Templeman’s mighty Kong was out, opening up the battle as Cam Paton consolidated a lead.
Dyson Delahunty was hovering in the top five, looking to challenge the front-runners and slipped up to a top three position.
Kenna Baker had clawed her way through to seventh, and had just overtaken Dave Templeman when she rolled, losing five places while her Yamaha was righted by Fergus Crabb and some mates and another five in a pit stop to check for damage.
Dyson Delahunty took the lead and won, heading home a full podium of UTVs with Cam Paton second and Noah Hutchison third.
The top six finishers all completed 18 laps. Eleventh place and the unlimited truck class win was good enough to give Nick Hall the national title – his second such overall win.