Check your calendar, diary and schedule. Cross out anything you have planned for Friday and Saturday, July 23 and 24. Take the time off, close your shop and send your staff home to enjoy the Volkswagen Rally the best way possible.
Get to Auto Pavilion on Friday to see the cars, meet the drivers and navigators and take a few photos. You will need to be there between 09:00 and midday to make the most of this opportunity before the action gets fast and dirty.
The teams will leave Auto Pavilion and head out to the Longmore Forest for three stages of rallying so plan accordingly as the trip from Uitenhage to the stages will be between 20 and 35 km depending on which spectator points you choose. For spectators who will not make it to the forest on Friday, they can make their way to PEOTR (Port Elizabeth Oval Track Raceway) by 15:45 to see the rally action.
Rally fans who simply cannot get out of work on Friday have two options – either the Winterhoek stage at 16:48 in Uitenhage or the Aldo Scribante Raceway stage at 17:35 – there will be a R30 per car charge at Scribante for spectators on Friday.
Any of these points – or the spectating in the forest on Saturday, the return to PEOTR or the big finish at Kings Beach on Saturday are good places to catch up with all the rally action. This year, instead of the usual two-way battle between Volkswagen and Toyota, there is a third contender to include for some dramatic rallying action. The Ford Fiesta will be there to make things interesting, based on performances earlier this year.
While the BP Volkswagen rally team will be flying the flag for the locals, there is more to the rally than just the action on stage. The event this year will be pioneering new dimensions to the national rally scene in South Africa.
The first is the use of a stage format similar to that in use in the World Rally Championship (WRC). The cars will complete two stages between services, with a repetition of the first four stages on Friday taking place on Saturday.
According to the VW Rally organisers, the Algoa Rally Club, this is the first time that this system has been used in a national rally. In addition, a full electronic timing and tracking system will be used to score the rally live – as the cars race through the stages.
This new system serves two purposes. The one is to act as a tracking system to keep the rally scorers updated on the competitors’ progress through the event. The other is to act as a safety system that competitors can use to call for help in the event of an accident.
Instead of relying on the next competitor on the scene, the system allows teams to call for assistance with the push of a button. This alerts officials that there is a problem and allows emergency crews to arrive at the exact point of the incident.
In keeping with the technology on the event, spectators who simply cannot wait to hear official results can keep track of the rally progress by registering for the sms service on www.vwrally.co.za. This is also the site to visit to download a copy of the Volkswagen Rally spectator guide just prior to the event – or grab a copy in one of the daily newspapers on Thursday, 22 July, the day before the rally starts.
While running in a slightly different format to previous years, the VW Rally promises to deliver another solid dose of action to fans from the start at Auto Pavilion on Friday right through to the final stage at Kings Beach on Saturday afternoon. The podium ceremony will also take place just after the event at Kings Beach and spectators are welcome to congratulate the winners at this event.
– Credit: Volkswagen of South Africa