The South African national rally champions for 2014 have been crowned at the penultimate round of the season. The Toyota pair of Leeroy Poulter and Elvene Coetzee grabbed victory at the event held this past weekend in Polokwane, thereby gaining an unassailable lead in the points table.
Poulter/Coetzee needed to score maximum points, as reigning champ Mark Cronje still had a mathematical chance of clinching the title. Cronje’s championship aspirations were scuppered when his Ford Fiesta made heavy contact with a fence post, destroying the front suspension. Poulter/Coetzee went on to take the win and the 2014 title with it.
“It is an amazing feeling,” said Poulter from the top step of the podium. “We had to fight so hard to get here; it is difficult to accept it has actually happened.” He also dedicated his championship to his late father: “I’m sure he would have loved to have been here for this.”
“I’m just so glad everything came together for us,” said Coetzee after the race. “One can dream and one can hope, but to actually stand on the podium and know the championship is ours, is simply unbelievable.”
Poulter has become the first Toyota driver since Serge Damseaux to claim the overall title for the Japanese marque. Damseaux’s championship was won in 2004, so it has been a decade since the championship went to Toyota.
Second place went to the VW Polo-mounted pair of Hans Weijs Jr and Bjorn Degandt. The S2000 Challenge class, for older specification S2000 rally machines, was won by Wilro Dippenaar and Kesavan Naidoo, in their Toyota Auris, who also claimed the final podium step.
The S1600, for FWD race vehicles with engines up to 1 600 cm3, championship was wrapped up by maiden championship winner Guy Botterill in his Toyota Etios R2. The young Durbanite, with navigator Simon Vacy-Lyle reading the notes, won all but one of the rounds so far in 2014, and with another victory on the Polokwane Motor Rally, the pair is well clear of their nearest competitors.
The final round of the 2014 championship will take place on 21 and 22 November, in the area surrounding Bela-Bela in the Limpopo province.
