The forests around Warburton and Panbult are set to witness the re-introduction of the Basil Read/bizhub Ford Fiesta S2000 when the Rally of South Africa gets underway from Ermelo.
The 4th round of the Sasol South African Rally Championship is not for the faint-hearted but the double Production Car champions Charl Wilken and Greg Godrich are well prepared after a number of productive test sessions since the M-Sport built Fiesta arrived in late April.
“We’ve done a number of tests to get used to the car but no matter how well I think we’re doing, nothing beats benchmarking yourself in the heat of competition”, says Wilken. “You can’t get away from the fact that we’ve done 100km of special stages in the past ten months, while everyone else has done around 800km and you can’t beat seat time to stay sharp”.
“We know the Fiesta is a brilliant car and expectations from our sponsors and the public will be high. Although we set some good stage times in Natal earlier this year, everyone has gone a lot quicker as the season has progressed”, Wilken continued. “I hope we can run consistently in the top five to start with. We will be more in tune with the car ahead of the Rally of SA than we were before the first round thanks to more seat time. Whatever happens, the whole Basil Read/bizhub Ford team is really excited to be back”.
Wilken feels that stage three, the notorious 56 km long Jessievale and fully 35% of the total rally mileage will be the make or break stage of the rally. “It’s a difficult situation to be in; it’s a tossup between going flat out and hope the car holds together or take a more cautious approach and risk losing a lot of time. That’s always been the equation but now, at the pace the front runners set, I think there’s no choice but to go hard the whole way”.
“It’s difficult to predict where we will fit in nor what to expect. From what I’ve seen, Volkswagen has taken a big jump in performance this year, while Toyota seems to have stayed where they were last year. Conrad is quick as we’ve seen. It’s going to be a thrilling two days”, Wilken concluded.
“The roads are usually in quite a good condition. The stages are not as challenging as those in the Tzaneen forests, but it’s more of a challenge than say the Volkswagen Rally stages in the Longmore Forest”, co-driver, Greg Godrich said.
He added: “They are fairly fast, sometimes scarily fast, especially the last part of Jessievale. There are probably 1500 to 2000 instructions I need to call in that stage alone and by the end, both driver and co-driver are exhausted!” Godrich said of the longest stage in SA rallying.
“There is a lot of pressure on the team but both Charl and I are used to pressure so it doesn’t get to us. I can’t wait to climb back in the Fiesta”, Godrich said.
The Rally of South Africa starts in Ermelo at noon on Friday, 28th May and takes in three stages around Warburton. Eight stages in the Panbult district are the meat of the rally on Saturday, which ends with two runs over the gravel-surfaced SuperSpecial stage on the outskirts of Ermelo.
– Credit: Flip Wilken Communications Management