Outer Bounds Racing’s Beau Robinson and Shane Hutt have taken out the day one honours at the Tatts Finke Desert Race.

The pair were fastest during the Method Race Wheels Prologue battle, which saw a number of high-profile casualties and interrupted runs on a frantic morning.

“It feels pretty good, to be honest. It’s been a hard slog getting here,” Robinson said.

“We get to have everyone behind us tomorrow and get the clean air. That’s what you want – clean air.

“Well obviously we know we are the fastest today, so we assume we are going to do better tomorrow. Especially in a truck on a truck course. Just having the clean air and no one in your way makes a big difference.

“There has been a fair bit of rain, so it’s damp, but it has been drying out during the week, so there are some puddles, but it’s generally going to be pretty good.

“Unfortunately for us, it’ll also be good for the guys behind because I think dust will be at minimum compared to other years.”

Reigning BFGoodrich Motorsport Australia Off Road Champions Travis Robinson and Andrew Pinto had a morning to forget, rolling their pro buggy in front of a big Alice Springs crowd and crashing out of contention.

That roll impacted a number of the top runners who received a yellow flag and were forced to take a second attempt at the prologue track.

But it wouldn’t be that simple for those running again – Aaron James rolling on his second run and again drawing the yellows and impacting a number of other drivers.

Once the order was settled, Beau Robinson remained on top ahead of Carl Haby and Chloe Roehr in second, with Andrew Brown and Danny Hardman in their Extreme 4WD rounding out the podium prologue.

Narrowly behind those was six-time King of the Desert Finke winner, Shannon Rentsch and new navigator, Darren Mollenoyux.

In the Transportable Shade Sheds Motorsport Australia SXS Championship, Jeff McNiven was the fastest of all runners, and also finished an impressive 18th outright. But it wasn’t without a battle, Jackson Evans finished just 0.8 seconds behind McNiven to narrowly miss out on the prize for the fastest ‘UTV’.

View the full results here.

With Method Race Wheels Prologue now complete, the Tatts Finke Desert Race resumes tomorrow morning at 7:30am ACST where Beau and Hutt will be leading the field down to Aputula.