Jean-Pierre Damseaux and Carolyn Swan were the leading Team Total privateers in the Swartland Rally in the Western Cape over the weekend, finishing the seventh and penultimate round of the Sasol South African Rally Championship in fifth place overall and also fifth in class S2000 in their Team Total Toyota RunX.
The event, run on Friday and Saturday over nine special stages and 178 km of gravel and tarmac in the Killarney, Malmesbury and Moorreesburg areas, was a 1-2-3 success for the factory Volkswagen Polo team with former champions Enzo Kuun and Guy Hodgson first ahead of multiple champions Jan Habig and Douglas Judd and defending champions Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries.
“We enjoyed a good, clean run over the two days,” said Damseaux, who found himself in second place overall at the end of the first day, which consisted of just one short gravel stage and two tarmac stages around the Killarney motor racing circuit.
The long-standing Team Total pair, with a number of individual class championships to their credit but teamed together for the first time this year, made no mistakes and cemented their second place in the privateers’ championship behind Zimbabweans Conrad Rautenbach and Peter Marsh (Ford Fiesta).
The ever-consistent Craig Trott, another Team Total veteran, and co-driver Robbie Coetzee, scored a well-earned win in class A6 in their Team Total Toyota RunX and now lead the 1600 cc championship by 20 points with one round of the championship remaining.
Not so fortunate were the other two Team Total crews making up the biggest privateer team in the championship.
Fernando Rueda, returning after a bout of pneumonia that saw him miss the recent Osram Rally in the Eastern Cape, and co-driver Cobus Vrey had a steady run in their S2000 Toyota RunX cut short by an electrical fault after they had successfully completed four of the nine stages. “The engine started cutting out on the first stage on Saturday and we couldn’t trace the fault in time at the service point between stages. Unfortunately we were time-barred,” said a disappointed Rueda.
Reigning class A6 champions Mohammed Moosa and Grant Martin (Team Total Toyota RunX) were having a good run in class S2000 when they misjudged the entrance to a farmyard on Saturday’s second special stage (stage 5) and damaged the Toyota’s front suspension after clipping a tree.
“After four modest points-scoring results in our first season in the top class, we had decided to go for it this event,” said Moosa. “We had a good day on Friday, finishing just outside the top 10, and were on the pace on Saturday, just a second off J-P and inside the top 10. The entrance to the farmyard was marked off with bunting and was a lot tighter than indicated on the route notes.
“We came in a bit too fast and slid wide under braking and I was unable to avoid clipping a tree. The contact broke the front suspension. This happened about 10 km in and we thought we could still make it to the end of the 38-km stage Unfortunately, the kingpin disintegrated about three kilometres further down the road and sent us off into the wheat fields.”
The final round of the championship is the Toyota Dealer Rally Gauteng on 15 and 16 October.
– Credit: Total South Africa.