After taking a back seat to soccer for almost two months, the 2010 Sasol South African Rally Championship resumes in the forests of the Eastern Cape on the 23rd and 24th of July. The four events held so far to take the season to its halfway stage have produced some of the most exciting and entertaining rallying seen in South Africa. For the major teams it will be business as usual as battle is rejoined.
“The four events held to date have produced four different winners and we have yet to see any one competitor put his stamp on the championship as we go into the second half of the season,” says Glyn Hall, Castrol Team Toyota team principal. “At this stage just four points separate Johnny Gemmell from series leader Enzo Kuun. Ten points behind them there is a group of six competitors covered by a spread of just 11 points. With another 100 points still to chase for the championship, it remains wide open for anyone in the top eight. A point of interest is that four of the top eight competitors are in Toyota S2000s, two of them privateers.
“The competitive nature of rallying this year is probably best illustrated by Johnny Gemmell’s thrilling 0.7 second win over Jan Habig in the Rally of South Africa. We can expect much of the same in Port Elizabeth as we take the fight to Volkswagen in their home event.
“Toyota has a proud record in the VW Rally. In the 26 year history of the event Toyota has won 13 times, 12 of those wins going to Serge Damseaux and one to Mark Cronje. Of the active competitors, Mark’s navigator Robert Paisley has the best record on the event with five wins and another six top three finishes in this classic forest rally. Mark also won an ABSA Off Road Championship event in the Longmore forests in a Hilux SP so there is an immense amount of experience and success within the team on this event
“During the break we have followed our policy of constant improvement on the Auris S2000 making small changes that allow the drivers that extra margin of comfort to chase that little bit harder – if that is at all possible given the furious pace of the events so far this year. Both Johnny and Mark have reported gains from the changes in testing so it’s game on for the VW Rally as we go all out for win number 14 together with our partners Castrol, Imperial Group (providers of our team transport) and the Innovation Group, suppliers of warranty administration for Toyota.”