The route for the Toyota Dealer 400, the penultimate round of the SA Off Road Car Racing Championship…presented by Absa, will be situated in the Kwena basin near Lydenburg and will be challenging and interesting for competitors and spectators alike.
SA Motorsport Club (SAM) route director, Dries de Klerk, has spent several weekends in the area and produced a route that features a wide variety of terrain ranging from high speed sections to river beds, tight winding roads and short stretches of tarmac.
“SAM has organised the Sasol Rally for 12 years and our task has always been to find smooth, fast roads best suited to rally cars so having to go to the other extreme to cater for off road racing needs has been a rather interesting exercise for us,” said Willie du Plessis, Clerk of the Course for the Sasol Rally and chief representative from SAM on the organising team. “The route for the Toyota Dealer 400 will hopefully be one of the most challenging on the national championship calendar and will definitely put crews and their vehicles to the test.”
“The Kwena basin area is situated on the R36, 35km from Lydenburg, and provides for great diversity of terrain that includes a number of river crossings, narrow winding sections, mountainous climbs and drops with wide open sections around Kwena Dam.
The Toyota Dealer 400 gets underway at 13:00 on Friday, October 24 with a 36km Prologue around Kwena Dam to determine starting positions for Saturday’s main event.
The symbolic start of the main event will be on Saturday, October 25 at 07:30 from Lydenburg Toyota on the corner of Voortrekker Street and Lange Street, Lydenburg and crews will then head out to the Lydenburg Airfield where the event proper gets underway at 08:00. Crews then head for the Kwena basin on a 120km section, which will only be used once, following which they will complete two laps of a 120km loop before finishing at the Badfontein Boere Saal near the Kwena Dam.
The first vehicle is expected at the finish at approximately 13:30.