BP
Volkswagen's Enzo Kuun dominated the seventh round of the Sasol South African Rally Championship to move within 4 points of clinching
his second driver's title after romping to an easy 40.3 second win, while co-driver Guy Hodgson took his title with a round to spare.
Volkswagen dominated the podium, recording their second ever 1-2-3 finish; Jan Habig/Douglas Judd ended second after a titanic battle with the outgoing champions Hergen Fekken/Pierre Arries. The three VW Polos were briefly headed by the resurgent Charl Wilken/Greg Godrich in their Basil Read/Bizhub Ford Fiesta S2000, who scorched through the tarmac stages on Friday evening to lead the rally overall.
Normal business resumed on Saturday's first 26.8km long stage where Kuun and Hodgson took a 4.8 second lead over the rest of the field. After stage 5, Kuun was 25 seconds to the good, 37 seconds clear after the next and a whisker over 40 seconds after the final long stage. The lanky VW driver took the fastest times on four of the nine stages, while Fekken was quickest just once. The Cape Town-based VW pair also sealed the Class S2000 Championship on the Cape sortie.
The incestuous VW fight for the balance of the podium placings saw Fekken/Arries on the middle step, 3 seconds ahead of Habig/Judd. The wily six times champion blasted through the last long stage outside Malmesbury just 0.3 seconds slower than stage winner Kuun, which pushed Fekken to the bottom step of the podium.
The Zimbabwean pairing of Conrad Rautenbach/Peter Marsh (Ford Fiesta S2000) ended day 1 a lowly 10th but were up into second overall after blitzing the field in the first Saturday stage after a heavy landing over a jump. Power steering pump problems in the next stage (5) left them unable to push any harder, as did the wrong gearbox ratios in the Fiesta's gearbox and they dropped to fourth place where they finished as the first privateer. Rautenbach leads the Privateer's Championship by 9 points from Jean-Pierre Damseaux/Carolyn Swan, who scraped home fifth overall.
Damseaux/Swan (S2000 Team Total Toyota RunX) were headed the whole weekend by the Basil Read Ford Fiesta. Wilken and Godrich, the overnight leaders and running first on the road on day 2, had the car's bonnet flip open and smash the windscreen on the long open section back to Cape Town, which left the driver blinded for the final two stages. Wilken left the Swartland area with fifth in the bank, but only by 2.1 seconds; they haemorrhaged over 13 seconds in the final short gravel stage alone and dropped to sixth in the process.
Wilken put the hammer down in the final stage and set the fastest time but it wasn't enough to regain their fifth place from the consistent and on-form Damseaux.
Hein Lategan's first visit to the Swartland Rally was an adventurous one. The Pretoria engineer and co-driver Johan van der Merwe lost the Pirtek Toyota Auris' power steering in stage 4 and broke a shock absorber in stage 5. They slid wide in stage 6 - and stalled - before having a close shave in stage 7, so they were relieved to grab some valuable points for seventh overall.
The Castrol Toyota Auris team had a weekend to forget. Championship challenger Johnny Gemmell and Drew Sturrock hit a rock in the very first stage which bent the steering arm. Although Gemmell set a time just 1.3 seconds slower than the stage winner Fekken, he stopped on the side of the road and removed the bent arm, panel-beating it with a rock. Their late arrival at service cost them a 10-second penalty. Gemmell's mysterious misfire returned in stage 4 on Saturday morning which cost them 29 seconds, dropping the Auris driver to eighth overall.
A slow puncture in stage 5 saw Gemmell crawl through the final 18km, setting the 14th-fastest time and plummeted to 13th overall, 227 seconds behind the leaders. He was back into ninth by the end of the final gravel stage and passed his teammates Leeroy Poulter/Robert Paisley for eighth at the finish, leaving the East Rand driver 21 points behind Kuun in the title chase and under serious threat from Habig, just 7 points adrift.
Poulter, the 2010 Class A6 Champion, was drafted into the second factory Castrol Toyota Auris and acquitted himself rather well. With the experienced Robert Paisley in the hot seat, Poulter spun and stalled on the first corner of the first stage and hit the same rock as Gemmell. Carrying a spare steering arm, they pulled up alongside their sister car and changed the bent component.
Poulter charged hard on the tarmac stages, setting the third-fastest time in stage 2 and ended seventh overall at the end of his first day in the top class. A massive 'moment' over a jump in stage 4 saw the talented driver rattled, so they settled into a steady rhythm, setting times inside the top ten to end ninth overall without further incident.
Nicholas Ryan/Armand du Toit brought their RCF/Jonnesway Volkswagen Polo S2000 home 10th overall. A misfire every time the car saw water cost Ryan a lot of time but they were happy with the result.
Jaco van Dyk/Des De Fortier brought their S2000 VW Polo home 11th overall after a bolt in a lower control arm broke in stage 7, leaving the wheel rubbing inside the arch. They removed a bolt from the sump plate to do a repair on the run, but the sump hit a concrete culvert and damaged something deep in the engine bay, leaving the Polo running at 128°C at the end of the warm spring day.
Theuns Joubert/Carl Peskin (S2000 Salom Group VW Polo) broke a gearbox during the shakedown stage, which was replaced before the event. The Mokopane businessman had a clean run to 12th place overall.
The other privateer S2000 entries didn't have a good event: Evan Hutchison/Elvéne Coetzee (Motorite VW Polo) retired at the end of Friday with a cracked gearbox, Mohammed Moosa/Grant Martin (Total Toyota RunX) went off the road and bent the suspension against a pole 10km into stage 5, Fernando Rueda/Dave Lewkowicz (Total Toyota RunX) retired in the open section between service and stage 5 with gearbox problems.
Visser du Plessis/Gerhard Snyman retired their Pirtek Toyota Auris with gearbox problems in stage 5, while Japie van Niekerk/Robin Houghton (NAD/Ctrack Toyota Auris) slid into a ditch in mud after a water-splash. With two rolls this year, Van Niekerk managed to hold the car and regain the road, only for an unrelated control arm failure to halt their progress in stage 7.
Mike Nathan/Etienne Lourens (Nathan Motors Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) ended 13th overall and won class N4, the sole survivor after Sebastiaan/Daniel Klaassen retired their Subaru Impreza with a broken gearbox.
Craig Trott/Robbie Coetzee (Team Total Toyota RunX) won class A6 and take a 20 point lead in the 1600cc Championship into the final round. Ashley Haigh Smith/Hilton Auffrey, the new Class A5 Champions, had a Class A6 Toyota Corolla at their disposal and jumped into an immediate lead. It was short lived as the React Toyota pair dropped loads of time on the race track stages.
Pushing hard in stage 5, the 18-year-old Haigh Smith set his car up for 'left one' corner after his co-driver called a 'right one' instruction. The resulting accident left the React Corolla well off the road and saw Haigh Smith drop to third in the 1600cc Championship standings after leading all year.
Megan/Oliver Verlaque (Toyota RunX) took their third class win of the season to close to within two points of the class championship leaders Robson Maganezi/Shaun Visser (Linking Africa Ford Fiesta ST). Oliver Verlaque is the N3 co-driver's champion for 2010. Ms. Verlaque drove the rally of her driving career to out-perform the local class favourites, Abduraghman Amlay/Yusuf Ganief (Toyota RunX), who had a wheel come off their car in the final stage.
Class A7 self-destructed on Friday when Gavin Cronjé/Henry Dearlove (Easylife Kitchens Faerie Glen VW Polo) had a strut break through the bonnet, and Gugu Zulu/Cindi Harding (BP Volkswagen Polo) retired with a cooked motor after stage 3.
Other notable retirements were Henk Lategan/Rikus Fourie (A5 Toyota Tazz), who rolled in stage 4 and Charl Strydom/Sakkie Bosman (A6 Sabre Paints VW Polo), who were excluded for using skimmed tyres for the tarmac stages.
The final round of the Sasol South African Rally Championship is the Toyota Dealer rally Gauteng on 15 and 16 October.
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