BAD WEATHER IN GEORGE CURTAILS SEASON-ENDING GARDEN ROUTE RALLY Heavy overnight rain that continued into the day has resulted in rally officials having to cancel six of today’s seven stages for safety reasons in the season-ending Garden Route Rally in the George area of the Western Cape. Overall leaders of the eighth and final round of the SA Rally Championship after Friday’s five stages and this morning’s first stage were newly-crowned 2013 champions Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton (S2000 Ford Dealer Team Fiesta), who have now officially been declared the provisional winners. They won four of the six stages completed, including this morning’s stage. Second overall, 12,3 seconds behind, were championship runners-up Johnny Gemmell and Carolyn Swan (Castrol Team Toyota Yaris), followed by their Toyota team-mates Leeroy Poulter and Elvéne Coetzee, who were a further 24,9 seconds in arrears in a second Yaris. This was the same finish order as at the Friday overnight stop in George. A distant fourth was the Volkswagen Sasolracing Polo of Enzo Kuun and Douglas Judd, who were 3 min 12,4 sec behind the leaders. Fifth was the leading S2000 Challenge car, the Team Total Toyota Auris of Mohammed Moosa and Andre Vermeulen (+3 min 58 sec), and sixth were outgoing S2000 Challenge winners Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin (VW Sasolracing Polo), who missed out on winning the S2000 Challenge category by 4,7 seconds after a spin on today’s only stage. They trailed the leaders by over four minutes. Cronje and Houghton’s fifth consecutive rally victory – they wrapped up their second successive championship in the penultimate round in Polokwane last month - was the first time this had been achieved in a single season since 1996 and equalled Serge Damseaux and Vito Bonafede in 1996, LB Odendaal and Christo Kuun in 1972 and Sarel van der Merwe and Frans Boshoff in 1981 and 1985. It was also their seventh win of the year out of the eight rounds, equalling the record seven victories in a single season by Van der Merwe and Boshoff in 1980 and 1983 and Damseaux and Bonafede in 1995 and 1996. It has been a momentous season for Ford, who became only the second manufacturer to win all rounds in a single season for the first time since Audi in 1983. Audi won nine out of nine with the legendary Quattro. Provisional winners of the S1600 two-wheel drive class were Clint Weston and Christoff Snyders (Reef Tankers Citroen C2 R2), who finished an impressive eighth overall in an event of attrition, which saw only 18 of the 31 starters complete Friday’s five stages. They were a comfortable 1 min 18,9 sec ahead of Ashley Haigh-Smith and Damian van Ass (Castrol Ford Fiesta R2) and 4 min 3,6 sec in front of 19-year-old rally rookie Ernie van der Walt and James Aldridge (Ferodo Ford Fiesta). In the process, Weston and Snyders clinched the S1600 championship for the year by five points from Craig Trott and Janine Lourens (Team Total Toyota RunX). Trott was the 2012 drivers’ champion and missed out on a second successive championship when well-placed to do so before crashing out of Friday’s final stage. Fourth in the two-wheel drive class and third in the championship were Matthew Vacy-Lyle and Schalk van Heerden (Fragram Tools Toyota RunX), fifth was the VW Polo of Megan Verlaque and Mari van der Walt, who finished 8,4 seconds behind the Toyota, and sixth were Chris Coertse and 2012 co-driver champion Robbie Coetzee (Toyota Etios). The manufacturers’ championship for the year had already been wrapped up by Toyota for the 21st time. The final score was Toyota 735, Ford 540, Volkswagen 530,5 and Citroen 102,5. With the cancellation of all but one of Saturday’s scheduled stages, the racing section of the rally was reduced to 106 kilometres from the original 182, so the event was effectively won and lost on day one. It could not have got off to a more dramatic start than it did on an overcast and eventually rainy first day. After Friday’s five high-speed gravel special stages, which included two in the Cape Pine forests that were each repeated, with water and mud patches from earlier rain making the roads very slippery in places, several top crews in all three classes were eliminated. These included Jean-Pierre Damseaux and Hilton Auffray (S2000 Challenge winners in their Team Total Toyota Auris in the previous round) in stage one with a broken master control arm after hitting a ditch, Jan Habig/Robert Paisley (Basil Read Ford Fiesta) in stage one with clutch problems, Henk Lategan/Barry White (VW Sasolracing Polo) in stage two after leaving the road and rolling, and Hergen Fekken/Pierre Arries (VW Sasolracing Polo) on stage five with a broken steering arm while lying fourth. The action-packed season finale had turned into a three-horse race with three familiar contenders – Cronje/Houghton, Gemmell/Swan and Poulter/Coetzee. Both Poulter and Gemmell had their chances to grab the lead in the fifth and last stage of the day on Friday when Cronje, who won stages one, three and four and was leading Poulter by 16,6 seconds and Gemmell by 28 seconds after stage four slowed them with a punctured front wheel on the 23-kilometre stage. Luck plays a big part in the final outcome of a rally and both Toyotas had the misfortune to also stumble when the door was opened. While Gemmell won the stage he was only able to reduce the gap to Cronje by 17,5 seconds after battling with a loss of power steering towards the end of the stage. Poulter, who won stage two, at 23 kilometres the longest of the rally’s 12 stages, and was looking to catch Cronje on the final stage, was himself slowed with a broken spark plug electrode. As a result he gave away another 8,4 seconds to Cronje after losing some 30 seconds and a chance of the lead. Ends Charmaine Fortune SA Rally Exco TEL: +27 (0) 11 4626243 FAX: +27 (0) 86 5043865 CELL: +27 (0) 82 991 0011
Posted on: Mon, 18 Nov 2013 17:54:12 +0000
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