Houghton/Cronje win first rally of 2013

Defending SA rally champions Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton piloted their  S2000 Ford Racing Fiesta to a dominant victory in the opening round of the SA National Rally Championship. The Total Rally took place in the cane fields of the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast this past weekend.

The pair won 10 of 14 special stages for an eventual lead of 1:05,00 to the second-placed Jan Habig/Robert Paisley in a similar machine. Third home were Jean-Pierre Damseaux and new co-driver Hilton Auffray in the first of the S2000 Challenge cars in a Toyota Auris.

Toyota Yaris of Leeroy Poulter and Elvene Coetzee gave the brand new Yaris rally car an impressive debut finishing fourth. They  narrowly missed out on a podium finish after mechanical gremlins forced them to take a time penalty.

Fifth overall and second in the S2000 Challenge were inaugural challenge champions Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin in the first of the factory Volkswagen Polos, 38 seconds behind Poulter and Coetzee. Rounding out the top six and missing a top-five finish by five seconds were Giniel de Villiers and new co-driver Greg Godrich (S2000 Toyota Auris), who battled with power steering problems on Saturday and picked up a 40-second penalty for a late start after the Auris suffered a high-pressure pump failure.

Round two of the national series the Sasol Rally takes place on 19 and 20 April in Mpumalanga.