Charl Wilken and Greg Godrich claimed their 4th win of the year and Team Subaru’s 5th visit to the top step of the Production Car podium after overcoming real All Wheel Drive conditions in the Swartland region of the Western Cape this past weekend. The region was saturated after heavy rains in the days and weeks before the event, leaving vast tracts of land under water.
With the overall Production Car Championship a formality to be settled on the final round of the Sasol SA Rally Championship, Wilken and Godrich pushed their Sasol/Konica Minolta Subaru Impreza N12B no harder than was necessary, opting to allow faster teams not in the championship running to set the early pace.
Wilken put the Class N4 Driver’s title beyond reach, adding to Godrich’s Co-Driver’s title settled last month – two championships in the bag with one round remaining.
The biggest decision to be made surrounded tyre choice; faster but more puncture prone ‘wet’ tyres, or slower but more durable ‘dry’ tyres, especially as a puncture in the 48km long first stage could make or break the event for the Subaru front runners.
Wilken, more concerned about winning the war rather than the battle at hand, chose a conservative set up. In the opening salvo, Hein Lategan/Johan van der Merwe took the early lead in their Afrox Subaru Impreza N12B by 11 seconds, but their run was short lived.
In stage two, the pair hit a watersplash hard enough to push the oil radiator into the water radiator just hard enough to cause a pin sized leak in the water cooling system. BY the end of stage two, the car was running at 115 degrees and the winners of the Osram Rally last month were forced to call it a day.
This left Wilken in the lead that he held to the finish, coming home an excellent 6th overall and takes his production car points tally to 84, twenty clear of rival Fernando Rueda’s Mitsubishi.
“The first stage was very long and tricky. I quickly found a comfortable pace that was there or thereabout but still well within our limits. It was always going to be a case of those with nothing to lose would be way faster than us and out there taking chances, so we waited for the conditions to take their toll. It happened in the 2nd stage so our strategy worked well for us”, Wilken related.
“When we did try wet tyres in the short stage 5 on Saturday morning, we were 10 seconds quicker than Rueda over 12 kilometers, whereas we only dropped 11 seconds over 48 km on dry tyres while the others were running on wets, so I was comfortable that we could pull something out of our bag of tricks if it was needed”.
Wilken put on a spectacular show at the Killarney race track, where the former track racer put his experience to good use by setting the fastest stage time of all, beating the more powerful factory cars from Volkswagen and Toyota in the process. “That was very satisfying”, Wilken smiled.
For Wilken, the overall production car championship scenario is one where Rueda must end 2nd overall on the last rally and Wilken must fail to finish to lose the title. With 9 top S2000 cars, a production car is highly unlikely to finish that high up the order, so the title is virtually, but not quite – in the bag.
3rd in the production car standings, the outgoing champion Visser du Plessis and co-driver Gerhard Snyman had another eventful rally in their Pirtek Subaru Impreza N14, ending 9th overall and third in the category. “A finish in the top 10 is always a good result given the quality of the field”, said Du Plessis. “I chose to run on ‘dry’ tyres on stage 1 and had no confidence in the Subaru’s handling, so we lost a minute right at the start. Later at service, I found the left front toe out by 10º, which caused the rear to be very tail happy”.
Du Plessis continued: “I was a bit despondent and just drove through the last stage on Friday, which was silly in hindsight because we threw another minute away. I was much quicker on Saturday and besides a silly overshoot in stage six when we went 40 metres off the road, I had a reasonable day. The gearbox was a bit scratchy and we broke a front shock”.
Du Plessis remains 3rd on the production car log, three points behind Rueda.
Local regional rally team John Peiser and Brian Hoskins brought their Speed Cycling Components Subaru Impreza GT home 12th overall. Favourites to win the Western Cape Regional Championship with a 12 point series lead, Peiser drove a steady race, using just a single set of dry specification tyres to stay out of trouble. “I was thinking about the championship all the time and wasn’t about to throw away a year’s work”, said the Cape Town based driver.
Peiser and Hoskins have won three rounds of the regional series this year with the final round in Caledon in two weeks time. “The car never missed a beat all weekend, although it was interesting at times in the muddy sections driving a car fitted with dry tyres”, Peiser smiled.
Paul Pfeifer and Cindi Harding never got to start the rally in their new Nobili Subaru Impreza N14 – the car developed engine problems in a shakedown run the day before the rally.
The final round of the Sasol SA Rally Championship is the Toyota Dealer Rally – Gauteng on 17 and 18 October.
