Reigning champions Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries (BP Volkswagen Polo) won the Rally of South Africa in Ermelo on Saturday afternoon by 23 seconds from VW team-mates and former champions Jannie Habig and Douglas Judd.
Third in the fourth round of the Sasol Rally Championship and a further 2 min 11 sec back, were Jean-Pierre Damseaux and Andre Vermeulen (Team TOTAL Toyota RunX), who picked up their best result of the season so far after three consecutive retirements.
Fourth overall and fourth in the premier Super 2000 class went to the Castrol Toyota Auris of Mark Cronje and Robert Paisley. Cronje led after the first two stages on Friday until gearbox problems on the event’s longest stage dropped him to sixth overall at the end of the first day.
Former champions Gugu Zulu/Carl Peskin (BP VW CitiGolf) won in class A5. Zulu said after the win:
“Initially Friday’s three stages we lost two minutes to our competitors, something that was quite new to us as we would normally be the ones leading by two minutes. On Saturday we decided to go flat out and hang our necks a little. This worked in our favour in that we reduced the deficit with two stages to go. The leader then made a mistake and got a puncture we virtually gave us the win.”
First production car home was the class N4 Sasol Konica Minolta Subaru of defending champions Charl Wilken and Greg Godrich, who finished fifth overall.
Fekken and Arries’ win moves them into the lead of the championship at the halfway stage, with 90 points, seven ahead of previous leaders Johnny Gemmell and Peter Marsh (Castrol Toyota Auris). Gemmell and Zimbabwean Marsh were slowed by a puncture in Friday’s long stage three and by a misfire in the first three stages on Saturday, which dropped them back to seventh overall. They eventually came home in sixth place.
Other class winners were Stevan Wilken/Greg Gericke (Pannar/Triton VW Polo) in class A7, Rodney Visagie/Carolyn Swan (Team TOTALToyota RunX) in class A6, and Dave Compton/Pierre Jordaan (Sasol Toyota RunX) in class N3.
- Peter Burroughes Communications
- Photography: Danie Van Jaarsveld, Motorpics
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