It was a tough rally for the factory Castrol Toyota team, losing all three entries on the rough and rocky 15-stage event. Serge Damseaux and Robert Paisley, after a cautious start, rolled their Super 2000 Castrol Toyota RunX RSi, 3.95km into stage 2 while pushing to make up their 7-second first stage deficit.
The left rear of the car clipped a bank on a tight, first gear left-hand hairpin corner and rolled over onto its side, coming to rest with the chassis against a tree.
“We couldn’t get the tree out of the way”, Robert joked. The team had to cut down the obstacle to extract the car, which was driven away to Nelspruit for a new windscreen and some panelbeating.
As a sporting gesture, Serge re-entered day two to give the thousands of spectators a show of his abilities and conduct some testing ahead of the Zulu Rally of South Africa next month.
Charl Wilken and Greg Godrich led class A7, the top two-wheel drive class, and powered their Castrol Toyota RunX RSi to a lead of nearly two minutes at the end of the first day. Running the SuperSpecial stage on Saturday morning, and locked in a head-to-head race with Jean Pierre Damseaux/Cobus Vrey’s similar Team Total Toyota RunX, Charl skidded on sand on the road and crashed spectacularly.
The car ploughed through a plastic barrier chicane, before hitting the concrete kerbing, which launched the RunX into the air, coming to rest on its roof. Both Charl and Greg emerged unscathed thanks to the RunX’s inherent strength.
“This was our 24th event together”, said Greg, “and the first one we haven’t finished”.
In class A6, Mark Cronje and Chris Birkin were well placed in their Castrol Toyota RunX RS after day one, 43 seconds off the class lead in the pairings’ second ever rally. Mark lost use of the power steering in stage 4 and had to run 15km of twisty stage to get back to service. A wrong slot in the tricky White River town stage cost more time.
The car retired in the first gravel stage on Saturday with suspected clutch failure. “The Sasol Rally was an eye opener and completely different in nature to our first event in the Cape last month”, said Mark. “My biggest problem was deciding how hard I could attack the rough stages without damaging my car. In my Castrol Hi Lux Off Road bakkie, I would be flat out in these conditions, so it was hard finding a rhythm”.
Toyota’s top scorer on the Sasol Rally was Etienne Lourens and Andre Vermeulen, who brought their S2000 Team Total Toyota RunX RSi home in 2nd place overall, the pairing’s best result since moving up from class A7 four years ago.
Total is Toyota’s official corporate sponsorship partner and fields a team of nine privateer Toyotas in seven different classes.
Etienne had a clean run on Friday, but suffered clutch problems on Saturday. The Total RunX had just taken the lead after stage 11 but an overshoot and stall in the next stage left the driver battling to select either reverse or a forward gear, losing 40 seconds in the process.
Jean-Pierre Damseaux and Cobus Vrey brought their Team Total Toyota RunX RSi home to a class A7 win after losing 2:40 on day 1 when the team was forced to change a power steering pump. Starting 3rd in class on Saturday, JP was in the lead after the SuperSpecial and held it to the end after a clean run.
Schalk Burger and Wimpie van Greunen squeaked home to a three second class A6 win in their SBinvest Toyota Corolla, leading a Toyota clean sweep in the class. Eugene Lourens/Derek Jacobs (Team Total Toyota Conquest) were 2nd in class after leading at the end of Friday, with the similar Conquest of Richard/Natasha Vaughan taking the final class podium place.
Michael Houghton/Bryn Doherty, the reigning class A5 champions, took line honours in their Team Total Toyota Tazz after a sideshaft change on day 1. Etienne Malherbe/Hennie Botes brought their Aprilia Racing Toyota Tazz home in 2nd place after dropping a devastating 16 minutes in stage three when a jack seized while changing a flat tyre.
Mohammed Moosa/Henry Dearlove (Team Total Toyota RunX RSi) led class N3 for much of the way, but a puncture in the final stage cost the team 1½ minutes, dropping them to 2nd in class.
It was left to Kobus Roos and returnee co-driver Niel Fourie to claim the top spot in class N3, making up a 2½-minute deficit from day one (with two punctures in a single stage). Kobus pushed his Sasol Toyota RunX to the limit, taking the class lead by 1 second in the penultimate stage.
Former world karting champion Claudio Piazza Musso and Greg Gericke were in the thick of the N3 battle, but hit a rock in stage 9 which flattened a wheel and bent a shock absorber. The pair stopped and lost 5 minutes. In the final stage in the Nelspruit arena, the CWP broke, leaving Greg to push the RunX to the final time control.
Kosta Koumantarakis/Barry White (Toyota Corolla) and Jaco/George Baker (SBinvest Toyota Corolla) gave Toyota a 1-2 finish in class N2.
“At the pace we run at the front of class S2000, A7 and A6, you have to expect the odd car to break or fall on its roof”, said Wammy Haddad, Toyota Motorsport Manager. “We have a lot of work to do before the Zulu Rally next month, but it wasn’t a bad event for Toyota as a whole”.
