Mohammed Moosa and Grant Martin (Toyota Auris) led a dominant Team TOTAL 1-2-3 in class A6 of the Sasol Rally, which ended in Nelspruit on Saturday. There was also a debut class win for Team TOTAL’s Vusi Mabanga and Shaun Visser in their class A5 Toyota Yaris.
Fernando Rueda and Cobus Vrey (Team TOTAL Toyota RunX) were the highest-placed privateers in the third round of the Sasol SA Rally Championship, finishing seventh overall and sixth in the hotly-contested premier class S2000 behind two factory Toyotas and three factory Volkswagen Polos. “We had a good, steady run this weekend, which was only spoiled by a puncture on Saturday morning in stage 10, losing us about a minute,” said Rueda, a former class N4 production car front runner who is having his first season in S2000.
Overall winners were Johnny Gemmell and Zimbabwean Peter Marsh in a factory Toyota Auris from defending national champions Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries in a factory VW Polo and Mark Cronje/Robert Paisley in the second works Toyota Auris.
Rueda’s class S2000 team-mates Jean-Pierre Damseaux and Andre Vermeulen (Team TOTAL Toyota RunX) were out of luck for the third event in a row, retiring after the first stage on Saturday when they experienced problems starting the car. They won the opening stage on Friday and were fifth overall and in class S2000 at the end of the first day.
Moosa and Martin, who led class A6 by over a minute from Team TOTAL team-mates Craig Trott and Robbie Coetzee and Rodney Visagie and Carolyn Swan (both in Toyota RunXs) at the end of the first day, were unstoppable and crossed the finish line at the Nelspruit Showgrounds with 3m 22s in hand over reigning class N3 champions Visagie and Swan and a further nine seconds ahead of Trott and Coetzee. After two successive class wins, Moosa and Martin lead the championship by two points from Trott and Coetzee and by three from Visagie and Swan.
The battle for class A5 see-sawed throughout the event with Team TOTAL’s Mabanga and Visser always in with a chance as they put in their best performance since teaming up together. They were second in class at the end of the first day behind the factory VW Citi Golf of Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin and took over the lead on Saturday morning when the VW hit problems.
They overcame the unwelcome challenge of a broken shock absorber that slowed them down from stage 7 on Saturday until the Race Prep team was able to replace it after stage 11. Despite the fact that their closest rivals, Morne Janse van Rensburg and Dewald Hattingh (VW Citi Golf), had almost caught up, they held on to win the class by 1m 44s.
Team TOTAL’s reigning class A7 champions, Chris de Wit and Dean Redelinghuys, were forced to retire after just two stages on Friday with engine problems in their Toyota RunX.
The next round of the championship is the Sport Car Club Rally in Mpumalanga on May 22 and 23.
