The new national rally championship season got off to a great start in KwaZulu Natal on Friday and Saturday with a class win first time out in their new class A6 Team TOTAL Toyota RunX for multiple former champion s Rodney Visagie and Carolyn Swan.
In an event of attrition in the canefields around Scottburgh on the South Coast, three members of the biggest privateer team in the Sasol SA Rally Championship were among the 22 survivors of the 38 cars that started the two-day event at Durban’s Sun Coast Casino on Friday.
Visagie and Swan finished 12th overall and led home a Team TOTAL 1-2 in class A6, with reigning champion Craig Trott and co-driver Robbie Coetzee 13th overall. Team-mates Mohammed Moosa and Grant Martin, who had led the class at the end of the first day by 1m 21s after the first six special stages, were unfortunate to suffer a broken steering rack on their Toyota Auris on stage 12 of the 15-stage event on Saturday while leading Visagie and Trott.
Highest-placed of the seven-car Team TOTAL contingent was the class S2000 Toyota RunX of Fernando Rueda and Cobus Vrey, with the Cape Town-based Spaniard revelling in his first experience of competing in the top class and completing the 160-odd km of racing special stages in a creditable sixth overall and fourth in class S2000.
Joining Moosa among the retirements were Jean-Pierre Damseaux and Andre Vermeulen in their Team TOTAL S2000 Toyota RunX and Vusi Mabanga/Shaun Visser (Team TOTAL class A5 Toyota Yaris). Reigning class A7 champions Chris de Wit and Dean Redelinghuys (Team TOTAL Toyota RunX) didn’t even make the Friday morning start after their car’s engine developed problems on Thursday.
Damseaux, winner of the Cape Swartland Rally in 2008, was unlucky enough to pick the number one start position on Friday and slid off the slippery road just three kilometres into the first stage. He returned to the event on Saturday under the Super Rally rules, which allow a restart but disqualify the competitor from scoring championship points, and won two of the six stages he contested and was second quickest in another two.
Mabanga and Visser were unlucky not to make the finish after a steady run and were forced out just three stages from the finish when they experienced fuel starvation problems.
Johnny Gemmell and Peter Marsh were the provisional overall winners in a class S2000 Toyota Auris. Gemmell, who won three of the 14 stages and was never headed after early leader and Toyota team-mate Mark Cronje rolled on stage nine, completed the event in a time of 1h 50m 23s.
Second, 2m 9s behind, was the Subaru Impreza of Charl Wilken and Greg Godrich, who won the production car category and class N4. They finished 11s ahead of reigning national rally champions Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries (Volkswagen Polo), who were second in class S2000 and won five stages. Fourth overall and second production car home was the class N4 Subaru Impreza of Hein Lategan and Johan van der Merwe and fifth were 2007 national champions Jannie Habig and Douglas Judd (S2000 Volkswagen Polo).
