Engines in battle for supremacy

in Mpumalanga.
Three weeks ago, South Africa’s top gravel racers put on a spectacular show in KwaZulu-Natal: six different stage winners; three different rally leaders; first and second places separated by 0,3 second with two stages to go; 18 S2000 cars from Ford, Peugeot, Toyota and Volkswagen and a full field of 10 Super 1600 cars in their own close fight for supremacy.
This is rallying in 2011!
This is the 20th Sasol Rally and fans are in for a thrill of a lifetime where any one of 12 teams can realistically take victory come next Saturday afternoon after traversing nearly 200km of York Timbers’ plantations.
Heading the field are the early championship leaders Conrad Rautenbach of Zimbabwe and French co-driver Nicolas Klinger (S2000 G-Fuel Ford Fiesta).
Rautenbach will attempt to win “two” rallies next weekend, the second round of both the South African and FIA African Rally Championships.
After winning two rallies in two different countries in three weeks, only the brave would bet against this! The surprise of the Tour Natal Rally was the instant pace of Mark Cronjé and Robin Houghton (S2000 Sasol Ford Fiesta). Cronjé climbed into his stunning Ford and blasted into a 30-second lead, sweeping to the fastest times in all five stages on the first day – without any apparent effort. Throughout the second day, Cronjé and Rautenbach were embroiled in a game of cat and mouse, all the while stalked by the BP Volkswagen Polo triplets Jan Habig/Robert Paisley, defending champions Enzo Kuun/Guy Hodgson and Hergen Fekken/Pierre Arries. These three pairings boast no less than 10 overall championships between them and are equally hungry to take home the silverware. A huge draw card on the Sasol Rally is the appearance of 2009 Dakar Rally winner Giniel de Villiers and Ralph Pitchford in a fourth factory-entered BP Volkswagen Polo. A steady run saw De Villiers finish eighth on his debut with the team and will surely increase his pace as the year develops. Toyota fields a pair of Castrol Aurises in the hands of Johnny Gemmell and Scotsman Drew Sturrock and young chargers Leeroy Poulter/Elvéne Coetzee. Poulter set some stunning times inside the top four before a broken steering component pitched the car into the sugar cane. Gemmell bore the brunt of the team’s bad luck but set competitive times along the way.
Toyota will be targeting its 100th South African rally win. Gemmell, the overall runner-up in the title race these past two seasons, is no stranger to close fights on the Sasol Rally: just two years ago, he broke a dead-heat with Fekken to win by four seconds. Another two Fords capable of winning are in the hands of Charl Wilken/Greg Godrich in their S2000 Basil Read Fiesta and the second Sasol Ford Fiesta of Jon Williams/Cobus Vrey. Wilken was struck down with electrical problems early in the KZN event, but fought back from 24th to 11th, making him a contender for overall victory to add to their win on the final round of 2010. Williams, sadly absent from the SA scene for 30 months, made a mature come-back in Natal, taking a steady approach as he learnt about the Fiesta, ending a respectable seventh overall.
Vrey brings 19 years co-driving experience to the team and success will surely come later this year. Peugeot is back in SA rallying with a pair of S2000 Pirtek-backed 207s! This exciting team with Hein Lategan/Johan vd Merwe and Visser du Plessis/Gerhard Snyman had a short-lived debut: Du Plessis crashed during testing and Lategan suffered terminal engine problems in stage 2.
The Peugeot 207 has a strong pedigree – three Intercontinental Rally Championships (IRC) and winners of the 2011 IRC Monte Carlo Rally, so expect fireworks from the proud lion on the nose of the French machines. A surprise on the opening encounter a few weeks ago was the competitiveness of the Team Total Toyota RunX drivers Jean-Pierre Damseaux/Carolyn Swan and Mohammed Moosa/Grant Martin.
Largely written off due to their car’s age, Damseaux scored an excellent fifth overall while Moosa was in the top end of the field before leaving bits of his car scattered all over the South Coast, eventually finishing last of the S2000 cars. – Rallyworld.net.