Mark Cronje and co-driver Robin Houghton delivered a sensational performance to claim their third victory in a row by a healthy 91-second margin and take the lead of the South African Rally Championship after dominating the leader board of the Garden Route Rally in their Team Sasol Ford Fiesta S2000.
Mark has a 4-point lead in the Drivers' Championship with Robin enjoying a 6-point advantage on the Co-Drivers' log with two rounds to go.
"We've got the momentum we need after coming a long way with a new car and team at the start of the year," said the ecstatic winner.
The George and Knysna-based event saw the privateer Sasol Ford pair jump into the lead after setting a storming time through stage two, in spite of the tight, twisty stages being very slippery following pre- and on-event rain. Another two stage wins saw the Sasol crew build a comfortable 42.8-second lead at the overnight halt in the hills above Knysna.
"Friday's stages were exceptionally difficult; we adopted the right approach which worked for us, which was basically to keep it neat and tidy and find the grip where we needed it," said the new championship leader.
Saturday saw Mark and Robin hammer home their advantage taking two seconds per kilometer off the second-placed factory Toyota crew of Johnny Gemmell, claiming their fourth stage win by some 31 seconds over the 22km stage. The only glitch in an otherwise perfect performance was a puncture in stage 8 when the Fiesta hit a rock hidden in a puddle of water.
"We had 8 km to go to the end of the stage; luckily it was a slow puncture but the tyre came off the rim completely with 5km to go. We dropped about 20 seconds but had around 2 minutes in hand so we weren't worried," Mark related.
Robin added: "We settled into our rhythm and didn't take too much notice of other teams' times. It was a clean run, with not a wheel off the road. The first stage on Saturday really put the nail in after we took 42 seconds off Johnny (Gemmell). It was a great event where we were never living on the edge."
Jon Williams and Cobus Vrey brought the second Team Sasol Fiesta home in seventh place after another event where luck deserted the young Cape Town driver.
After setting good times in the opening stages, the windscreen started to mist up, costing loads of time to the leaders. I reckon we were around fifth at the time and dropped to eighth," said a disappointed Jon.
On Saturday, the fire extinguisher came loose and rolled around the foot well, not what you need in stages where the longest straight bit of road was 200 metres!
"I tried to hold the extinguisher with my calf but kept having to change legs as I needed to brake or accelerate. My muscles are really sore," Jon smiled.
The #7 Sasol Ford also endured four punctures but their worst incident occurred in stage 9 when they rounded a corner a found the stage littered with logs, which landed in the road after Jan Habig hit them and went off the road.
"It was very slippery and I couldn't stop in time. I closed my eyes for a moment but managed to knock one out the way, which ripped a tyre off the rim and we lost a minute as a result," Jon continued. "We were in a good fight with Giniel (de Villiers), and Conrad (Rautenbach) but had really bad luck again which was out of my control. I learnt a lot about the car in these conditions. Now we need a little luck to deliver a better result for the team. It was a very positive event for us. The windscreen is expensive and I rather expect the thing to work."
Dean Somerset, Sasol Sponsorship manager said: "It is a great result for Mark, Robin and Team Sasol. It puts us in a favourable position to challenge for the championship over the last two rounds which are going to be very exciting and tense for us."
The seventh round of the championship is the Toyota Dealer Cape Rally on 23 and 24 September.
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