Motorite Racing’s Evan Hutchison and Elvene Coetzee are determined to end their first season in the top echelon of rallying on a high note as they prepare for the final round of the Sasol SA Rally Championship, the Toyota Gauteng Dealer Rally this weekend (15 and 16 October).
Their first year in class S2000 in the Motorite Volkswagen Polo after winning class A7 last year in a Motorite Racing Toyota RunX has seen them establish themselves as potential top-10 finishers, but three retirements have prevented them from achieving their top-10 goal.
“We’ll be putting our past problems behind us this weekend and concentrating on taking maximum advantage of this last chance to score a good result,” said the ever-optimistic Hutchison.
“This season has been a hard and frustrating introduction to the top echelon of national championship rallying. We didn’t expect it to be easy and we knew we’d take a few knocks along the way. We came into class S2000 with a really good finishing record – we scored in every round of last year’s championship in winning class A7 – so posting three DNFs has been a big disappointment.
“It’s been a great experience competing against the top rally drivers and navigators in South Africa and Elvene and I have learnt a lot. I have to thank my main sponsor Motorite for making this possible in only our third season of rallying and also Volkswagen for providing a great rally car in the Polo.”
This weekend’s season finale has the added challenge of more tar special stage kilometres than any of the previous seven rounds. Friday is an all-tar affair with five stages at the Gerotek vehicle testing facility west of Pretoria, starting at 13h00, and finishing with a stage at the Zwartkops motor racing circuit. There are five gravel stages on Saturday in the Bapsfontein area with two super special stages at RallyStar on the R51 from Benoni to Bapsfontein, where the rally will finish after 14h00.
Motorite Racing is the motor sport division of Motorite Insurance Administrators, the largest independent mechanical breakdown insurance and full maintenance plan service provider and administrator in South Africa.
– Credit: Peter Burroughes Communications.