Summarize

Hennie de Klerk and Adriaan Roets returned to Inland Off Road action with their faithful TreasuryOne BMW X3 and ended up ruffling a few feathers at a very well supported Stella 300 on Saturday. Despite having to go off route to refuel, de Klerk and Roets kept some of the latest machinery out there very busy with their venerable 12-year old warrior.

"The TreasuryOne BMW is back in shape performing very well!” Hennie pointed out. “We suffered a broken chassis and were forced to retire from the Kalahari Rally in August, but Tjaart performed miracles to get the BMW ready. “He even went as far as to borrow some chrome moly steel piping from our new race car project to fix the BMW frame, because there’s no chrome moly available in South Africa at the moment.

“We qualified 6th and had a fairly good run in the Stella race. “Adriaan did a stunning job in the navigation seat again and we were running third overall behind Eben Basson’s Red-Lined VK56 and Ernest Roberts’ new Century CR6. “Unfortunately we don't carry enough fuel to go the full 280 km racing distance like them, and had to leave the route to refuel after loop 2. “So we lost a couple of minutes getting back to the DSP and then we had a puncture 10 km from home. 

“Still, we came home fourth overall and third in class, just a couple of minutes behind the leaders in brand new cars,” Hennie concluded. “Not too bad for a 12 year old car!” Hennie and Adriaan have delayed their Dakar effort by a year to 2023. They will continue to race selected events while their new WCT Engineering TreasuryOne Dakar Toyota Hilux takes shape.