The Cape Peninsula Motorcycle and Car Club, now in its 100 year, is proud to present the 73rd running of its national rally. The event was not run during the 2nd world war and except for a further 3 years has always been a national championship event.
It was started out as the Double Twelve Rally which in those days ran through midday and midnight, hence its name. The 17TH & 18th September sees the running of the CPMCC Swartland Rally, the 7th round of the Sasol South African National Rally Championship. This event ,being the second last event on the calendar, will once again see those competitors, who have a chance of either winning a class title or the championship title, taking a “no holes barred” approach to the event . The national championship would appear to be a two horse race with Enzo Kuhn and Guy Hodgson heading the leader board with 113 points, followed by Johnny Gemmel and Drew Sturrock with 104 points. Jan Habig, Conrad Rautenbach, Hergen Fekken and Jean Pierre Damseaux with their navigators are all in with a mathematical chance of grabbing the honours.
The A5 clas has already been wrapped up by CPMCC’s Ashley Haigh-Smith, who clinched the title by winning the A5 class on the Osram rally last month. However, never to turn down a challenge, Ashley has a chance of also winning the Class A6 title as well and to this end he is not running his trusty A5 Toyota Yaris but in jumping into dads A6 Toyota Corolla to have a bash at the A6 title. Ashley has just turned 17 years old and has displayed maturity and ability beyond his years. He was given a special dispensation by Motorsport South Africa to rally when he was just 16 years of age. He was allowed to drive the car on the special stages and then get out of the driver’s seat and let his co-driver, who has a drivers licence, drive on the open sections of the rally which incorporated driving on public roads and then swap over again to drive the next special stage. If one of the works teams don’t offer him a works drive soon then they will be missing a huge opportunity. Other Cape Town crews to watch out for are J P Damseaux and Carolyn Swan and Fernando Rueda and Cobus Vrey in the S 2000 class. Charl Strydom and Sakkie Bosman will be pitting their skills against Ashley in the A6 class. Andre Kleenwerk and Kes Naidoo will once again contest the A5 class and it is good to have them back after they were forced to miss the Osram Rally, on medical advice, after their horrific roll on the Volkswagen Rally in July.
With 38 National entries and 10 regional entries in the event to date this event promises to once again to show case the best rally drivers in the country
The event starts at the Killarney race track at 16h00 on Friday the 17th September with the first stage being close to the N7 highway near the Killarney race track. The 2nd and 3rd stages takes place at the Killarney race track starting at about 16h47. These track stages always progve to be very spectacular and are a firm favourite with the spectators.
On Saturday the event moves out to the farms just north of Malmesbury where the farms roads will provide a severe test of both man and machine. The first of these four stages will run at about 08h40 with the last two stages being the N7 and Killarney stages and the event finishing at about 15h30.
– Credit: Cape Peninsula Motorcycle and Car Club.