The Volkswagen Rally 2011 will see a brand new stage added to the traditional favourites on the list. This stage will see the national rally field competing in the area around the Nelson Mandela Bay 2010 World Cup stadium – a first for the event.
The current season has been a full-scale war between the various teams and with Volkswagen, Toyota, Ford and Peugeot all involved in the race for S2000 honours, the action is fast and highly unpredictable. The annual Volkswagen event provides an excellent opportunity for rally fans to see just how challenging the national championship has become.
The Volkswagen Rally 2011 will get underway from Auto Pavilion on Friday, 15 July and finish at its traditional venue, the Kings Beach parking lot on Saturday, July 16, with competitors having covered 12 stages in total.
Six stages of gravel action will take place in the Longmore Forest – three on each day – with Uitenhage hosting the first of the tar stages on Friday afternoon, the action-packed Winterhoek stage which will be run as a Super Special – that’s two rally cars in-stage simultaneously – and it will be run back-to-back!
The Longmore stages and PEOTR (Port Elizabeth Oval Track Raceway) are providing the organisers with some pre-event headaches. Heavy rains over the past few weeks have caused some problems.
“We’ve had two bridges washed away in the Longmore Forest – one has been fixed and we’ve avoided the other by changing the stage layout,” says Joe Fourie who organises the Volkswagen Rally on behalf of the Algoa Rally Association. “That area has as much rain in the last month as they normally see in a year!
“Overall though, the roads are in good condition and we’re expecting a good event. PEOTR is still under water and we haven’t even video taped the route for the competitors yet, that’s a problem but we’ll deal with it. We’re planning a pre-event run-through a day or two before the actual event and then we’ll make decisions based on that information.”
With the move to a more WRC-like (World Rally Championship) class structure, the face of national rallying is changing in South Africa. The S2000 category is the top level of competition in the country, followed by the junior championship which comprises the S1600 and S1400 categories. The A7 category is in its last year of competition this season and will no longer be run from 2012.
Not only is S2000 the most exciting and competitive class, it is also the most popular and the entry list keeps growing. The fight in this class this season is between the Volkswagens, Toyotas, Fords and Peugeots – and each event has proved unpredictable in terms of results with the Volkswagen Rally, round five of the 2011 season, expected to be no different.