The BP Volkswagen rally team fly into action at the Rally of South Africa on Friday and Saturday, 28 – 29 May, to contest Round Four of the South African National Rally Championship. Expect one thing at this event – an insane level of competition between the teams.
The BP Volkswagen S2000 Polo team of Enzo Kuun and Guy Hodgson are now the championship leaders for 2010 after winning the Sasol Rally that took place in March. They have a small cushion of advantage going into the Rally of South Africa, just 16 points over their rivals.
Any advantage is welcome and the pair will undoubtedly capitalise on this bit of breathing room, but the sheer pace of this season makes the leading positions incredibly difficult to hang on to.
This was brought into sharp focus at the Sasol event when the Ford Fiesta of Conrad Rautenbach and Peter Marsh which was engaged in a titanic battle for mastery of the event with the defending champions Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries. The result was that both leading crews crashed out, allowing the third-place runner on the event, Kuun and Hodgson, to claim that precious victory.
The knock-on result of this double DNF (did not finish) is that Fekken and Arries have been relegated to third place on the leaderboard and Rautenbach whilst Marsh are in fourth. With Kuun and Hodgson scaling the ranks for first place, the Toyota entry of Mark Cronje and Robert Paisley have moved into second spot.
There are now 25 points separating these top four rally crews – and that’s the same number of points a team can score for a rally victory. The maths involved equals just one result – one of the most competitive rallies of the 2010 season will be taking place in this Ermelo-headquartered event in Mpumalanga.
The pace over these 13 stages that make up the Rally of South Africa is expected to be of the breakneck variety, while the rally competitors also concentrate on keeping their cars together. This will be especially true of the 58 km Jessievale stage, a daunting challenge for all competitors.
While the frontrunners dish out bloody noses to their competition as each attempts to claim the most stage wins, Jan Habig and Ralph Pitchford will continue their quiet points-gathering form. They are currently in sixth place overall but a solid performance at this event will keep them in the running and mean valuable points when it counts – in the closing stages of the season.
Habig and Pitchford are currently in their first season together, Habig having previously rallied with navigator Douglas Judd. Pitchford knows his off-road stuff and has experience in international Dakar racing, navigating the Volkswagen Touareg of Mark Miller.
Rally competition has a much faster pace for navigators, with a more constant stream of information being fed through to the driver.
Despite the challenges posed by a new driver/navigator pairing at the top level of the sport in South Africa, the pair has adapted well and their third place finish at the Sasol Rally is their best to date this season.
In class A7 the BP Volkswagen Polo of Gugu Zulu has a new navigator, the experienced Cindi Harding. Harding takes over from Shaun Visser who contested the first three rallies this season with Zulu. The challenge for Harding will be start navigating for a new driver mid-season and successfully get the duo on pace from the outset.
Harding’s years of experience in rallying will undoubtedly stand her in good stead for the task as Zulu concentrates on mastering his A7 class Polo, which he only started competition in from the second round of this year.
In class A5, André Cleenwerck and Kesevan Naidoo will be hard at work to improve on their third place in this class. The BP Volkswagen Citi Golf in BP Ultimate colours has seen the duo in some fierce battles, but a run of bad luck seems to be hampering their efforts at claiming the solid finishes they so desperately need.
Each of the BP Volkswagen rally entries will face their own particular challenges at the Rally of South Africa, and watching them tackle these challenges head on is going to produce some excellent spectating opportunities.
– Credit: Volkswagen of South Africa
