Jean-Pierre Damseaux and Cobus Vrey were the team’s highest-placed finishers in seventh place overall and in class S2000 in their Team TOTAL Toyota RunX. The Cape Town pair led the rally by a single second after the first three special stages on Friday (they won stage two), but dropped back to sixth overall at the end of the first day after a puncture on stage four saw them lose over half a minute. A central diff problem on stage nine resulted in a loss of drive to the rear wheels and, with not enough time to change the diff, they soldiered on in two-wheel drive to collect 14 valuable championship points.
Capetonian Fernando Rueda and Dave Lewkowicz (Team TOTAL Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9) finished second in the production car category and in class N4 and 10th overall despite a disastrous start on Friday when they suffered a broken propshaft on the first stage. They were third in class and 12th overall at the end of the first day and started day two with the conservative objective of keeping the car on the road and picking up places as others experienced problems. After two rounds they are fourth overall and fourth in the production car category and class N4.
De Witt and Redelinghuys lead class A7 and are ninth overall. Trott and Ball, with two successive class wins to date, lead class A6. Visagie and Swan, who failed to score in round one, are second in class N3.
The 355-km event, which consisted of 12 special stages totalling 206 km of special stages, saw a healthy finishing rate of 35 cars, with 11 of the original 49 national championship contenders failing to make it to the finish in Somerset West. There were three non-starters, including Team TOTAL’s Vusi Mabanga and Shawn Visser, who experienced engine problems on their class A5 Toyota Tazz on Thursday evening.
Sisters Lola and Megan Verlaque (Team TOTAL Subaru Impreza), 16TH overall and fourth in class N4 at the end of day one, went out with a broken sideshaft after struggling to the end of stage seven on Saturday morning. Normally they would have been able to replace the sideshaft, but they discovered that their spares didn’t fit properly. Salie and Armand du Toit (Team TOTAL Toyota RunX) suffered a terminal diff problem on stage seven after also breaking a sideshaft.
Mohammed Moosa and Grant Martin (Team TOTAL Toyota Corolla) battled throughout most of the rally with gearbox problems before finally retiring after completing stage nine on Saturday.
The third round of the championship is the Sasol Rally in Mpumalanga on May 2 and 3.
Provisional results:
1 Hergen Fekken/Pierre Arries (class S2000 VW Polo) 1h 48m 14s; 2 Enzo Kuun/Guy Hodgson (class S2000 VW Polo) +9s; 3 Mark Cronje/Robert Paisley (class S2000 Toyota RunX) +30s; 4 Jan Habig/Douglas Judd (class S2000 VW Polo) +55s; 5 Johnny Gemmell/Peter Marsh (class S2000 Toyota RunX) +1m 35s; 6 Jon and Douglas Williams (class S2000 VW Polo) +3m 4s; 7 Jean-Pierre Damseaux/Cobus Vrey (class S2000 Toyota RunX) +3m 47s; 8 Nicholas Ryan/Schalk van Heerden (class S2000 Toyota RunX) +5m 25s; 9 Charl Wilken/Greg Godrich (class N4 Subaru Impreza) +5m 42s; 10 Fernando Rueda/David Lewkowicz (class N4 Mitsubishi Lancer) +7m 3s.
