After six rounds of the series, Serge Damseaux and Robert Paisley are finely poised in the championship chase with 100 points to their names after taking their class S2000 Castrol Toyota RunX RSi to two wins and a string of points paying results, including two second place finishes. Serge, with 73 career wins to his name, is chasing his record-equaling 11th driver’s title, while Robert is looking for his third co-driver’s crown.
In the class S2000 title chase, Serge and Robert have a narrow two point gap to their nearest rivals.
As teams count their best seven results from the eight round Sasol-backed SA Rally Championship, Serge and Robert are able to drop their Osram Rally score from last month, which puts them two points off the log lead as rivals Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries will discard 10 points at this stage of the season.
“We have to go strong from the start. We don’t have much choice in the matter”, Serge said of his tactics. “Then again there are five or six teams who all want to win so it’s going to be a long, hard fought weekend”.
“An ideal situation for us right now would be for Robert and I to win with Johnny or one of the Team Total Toyotas filling the next few places,” Serge quipped. “We must have back up from the others and they need to split the Volkswagens.”
“The sharp end of rallying is so competitive these days that you are forced to drive flat out all day, not an ideal situation for us as we cannot afford any more non-finishes. The pressure is on everyone in the title hunt so it’s the same for all of us. We’ll have to wait to see whom – if anyone – cracks first. It’s going to be a fantastic fight and the spectators are in for a real treat,” Serge maintains.
Serge continued: “The roads we are going to use have taken a beating with the recent rains in the Western Cape, so it’s going to be a tricky blend of pace and preserving the car. If it rains, it will be a lottery and we will have to change our tactics accordingly. I don’t mind the rain as it requires more skill so I think we’ll be better off.”
Johnny Gemmell, enjoying a revival in the second S2000 Castrol Toyota RunX RSi, will be under his own pressure to support the team’s title aspirations.
“I understand the necessity to get in amongst the VWs and take points away from them to help Serge and the Castrol Toyota team achieve their objectives. I’m looking forward to raining on a few people’s parades – it should be fun but we’ll have to wait and see what happens”, Johnny said.
“My first ever rally win was on this event in 2001. Six years is a long time to wait – I think we’re overdue another one. Seriously, the Cape events have been good to me so I’m really confident of a good showing. I’ve never driven a Super 2000 car in the rain so if it’s wet, it’s going to be an interesting weekend!
One Castrol Toyota pairing not under any pressure is Mark Cronje and Chris Birkin, already crowned champions in class A7. The Castrol RunX RSi has enjoyed a dominant clean sweep of six class wins from six starts.
“Our goal will be to get as high up the overall order as we can to give Toyota as many points as possible. Toyota can win the Manufacturer’s Championship in the Cape and it would be a great ending to a fantastic year for the Castrol Toyota rally team if we can help the team achieve this, especially as Toyota is celebrating their 50th year of motorsport participation”, said Mark.
“Whatever happens, we’re going to enjoy ourselves. I’m glad there is a new A7 car making its debut as its good for the sport. I’ve only ever driven a competition vehicle on gravel in the rain once and that was the Cape Rally last year. It will be interesting weekend if turns out wet”, Mark commented.
Toyota is well positioned in the all-important Manufacturer’s Championship, with a healthy 1009 points, 372 ahead of market rivals Volkswagen. With an average score of 168 points per rally against VW’s 106, the difference is almost insurmountable and Toyota could take their 16th title home this weekend.
Backing up, even challenging the factory-entered Castrol Toyota squad is a healthy and highly competitive 10-car fleet of Team Total backed Toyotas, spread amongst classes S2000, A7, A6, A5 and N3.
Heading the Team Total challenge is Etienne Lourens and Andre Vermeulen, able and ready to challenge for an outright win. They have scored four times this year and lie tied on points with Jean-Pierre Damseaux/Cobus Vrey’s similar Total RunX RSi, both with 61 points apiece.
Damseaux Junior is in his first season in the premier class and has acquitted himself well with three consecutive fourth place finishes at the start of the season.
Chris de Wit is second in the class A7 championship standings, level on points with Tony Ball (VW Golf) so he and co-driver Dean Redelinghuys will pull out all the stops to make that position their own come Saturday afternoon.
Three Team Total Toyota RunXs are poised to fight tooth and nail for the class A6 win in the Cape, but it is former champion Craig Trott and Carolyn Swan who have the luxury of needing just three points from the last two events to take the trophies back to KwaZulu Natal. Three class wins and just one retirement this year have given the veteran driver a 15 point cushion over Stevan Wilken’s VW Polo.
Salie du Toit/Gert van Rensburg are also level on points for second place and also boast a pair of class wins. Du Toit should prevail, as Trott has no need to win the A6 fight in the remaining two events.
Eugene Lourens/Derek Jacobs compete in the oldest car in the series, a 16 year old Team Total Toyota Conquest, which has forced them to drive harder than most to keep up with the RunX duo and will consider themselves lucky to come away with a good helping of points.
Vusi Mabanga/Danie Strydom have claimed their best class A5 result to date on the Zulu Rally and will target another class podium to move up the order.
Class N3 sees a trio of Team Total Toyota RunXs involved in a terrific scarp for the class title. The near-standard RunXs are so closely matched that just three points separates the threesome. Mohammed Moosa/Henry Dearlove jumped to the top of the heap after the Free State Rally last month, two points ahead of Rodney Visagie/Arno Lagrange.
Visagie is a multiple rally champion and never gives up, so sparks will surely fly as the war rages. Michael Houghton and Hennie Botes led the class N3 log for most of the year, but a disastrous non-finish on the Osram event last month dropped them a point behind Visagie.
Kosta Koumantarakis/Barry White (Toyota RunX) are able to cause an upset as they did in KwaZulu Natal in May, so spectators are in for a David vs Goliath battle through the Cape wheat fields.
Toyota’s new generation entry-level rally weapon is the fast selling Yaris, undergoing its development year in the public arena. The Sasol sponsored Toyota Yaris will make its first competition appearance on Cape soil on the Swartland Rally. In it’s debut event, Claudio Piazza Musso/Greg Gericke won two tar stages and won again on gravel on the following rally, marking the Yaris as an inherently competitive package.
The Total Swartland Rally starts from the Killarney Racetrack at noon and takes in two gravel stages in the Moorreesburg area before returning to the racetrack for two scintillating SuperSpecial stages, where evenly matched cars run head-to-head over a mirror image course. This event has traditionally seen packed grandstands enjoying the thrill-a-minute action.
Saturday starts at 07h00 and takes in four gravel stages, including stage nine, at 40kms the longest of the event. The rally finishes with a five-lap blast around Killarney, where the podium ceremony will take place.
