The 2020 season has come to a close with a fantastic race at the Kalgoorlie Desert Race. The race week started early at Kalgoorlie with the team travelling on Thursday ahead of Thursday nights street party. A large crowd was on hand to check out the vehicles as well as a freestyle motocross show which really set the tone for an exciting event.
Friday lunch time was the prologue and the #606 Canam was on the charge, setting the 12th quickest time outright and 2nd in SXS Turbo, just 3 seconds behind the #639 of Friday Boyce. Friday night was to be a top 10 shootout under lights and with a few of the cars who had qualified ahead having issues, we were bumped up into the Dash for Cash. With the prologue track being shortened, light towers firing up and a large crowd assembling, there was a buzz around the King of the West venue. Jason and Kiera pushed to the limit, setting at the time they finished the quickest time. As a few of the big guns set their times, we were knocked off top spot, eventually finishing 8th outright in the dash, fastest SXS and less than 5 seconds off the quickest time
Saturday was the first race day with a single lap of the Kalgoorlie track the task. The team held a consistent pace to sit 2nd in the SXS class and moving up into 8th outright. After checking over the X3 the team checked in for an early nights sleep as Sunday was going to be a big day with 2 more sections, each 1 lap of the Kalgoorlie track.
Sunday mornings section was more of the same as Saturday, a consistent and clean run. The team stayed 8th outright, but dropped to 3rd in class. Most importantly there was not a scratch on the car, with only precautionary checks required in the gap between sections. It was still a close battle with any of the top 5 SXS’s in the hunt to take the class win.
Sunday afternoon’s section would see a lot of change on the leaderboard. The section started well for the #606 machine, on the charge early, passing a some cars and looking good to be in hunt for a class podium. as the kilometers wound down, a faulty switch meant the transfer pump for the fuel wasn’t transferring the fuel to the main tank. In an attempt to make the fuel last the distance, Jason backed down to half throttle to try and cruise home, whilst Kiera tried to play with the wires under the switch to get the pump working again. With around 20kms to go and almost out of fuel, the pump started transferring again and the team picked up the pace again. A hard charge across the final km’s paid off as we crossed the line to discover we had snuck into 2nd in class by just 12 seconds and claimed 6th outright
This result also sealed some major achievements for the season with Jason Galea taking 3rd outright driver in the Western Australian Off Road Racing Championship and 2nd in SXS Turbo class, whilst Kiera Mann-Piercy takes home 2nd outright navigator in the WAORC and 2nd in the SXS Turbo class. This is a massive achievement for the team who missed the season opening Perenjori race
Cagetec Racing would like to thank all of its customers and supporters throughout the 2020 season, especially Maglock Air Australia and Penrite Oil