Toyota’s success in the 20th Sasol Rally in Mpumalanga last weekend (April 16) not only marked the historic milestone of 100 Toyota victories in the 51-year history of the South African rally championship, but was also the latest in more than four decades of Toyota successes in national championship rallying.
The Toyota brand is recognised as a dominant force in South African rallying and the leading motor manufacturer in South Africa can trace its first rally victory back to 1968 when Jan Hettema and Raggy Schjolberg won that year’s Moonlight Rally.
The pair followed this up with a win in the Tour Natal Rally later in the season and these two wins combined with consistent finishes in the other five events in the championship saw Hettema and Schjolberg secure Toyota South Africa’s first championship title.
Leeroy Poulter and Elvene Coetzee’s debut national championship win in the Sasol Rally last weekend ahead of Castrol Toyota teammates Johnny Gemmell and Drew Sturrock was also notable for the fact that it was just the pair’s third event together and only Poulter’s tenth National championship rally and fourth in the premier Super 2000 Class.
The 30-year-old former South African circuit racing champion and national and world karting champion has taken to the sport of special stage rallying like a duck to water since making his debut in Class A6 in a Toyota RunX in 2010 and winning the class with two rounds remaining.
Poulter’s win perhaps signalled a changing of the guard in the rarified top echelon of this highly technical and demanding branch of motor sport. In his wake he left three former national champions (Hergen Fekken, Enzo Kuun and Jannie Habig) in Volkswagen Polo Vivos, who between them have won the last six championships.
For Coetzee, it was also an historic achievement in only her tenth event in the premier class. The twenty-something former Class A7 National Champion was the fifth woman co-driver to win a National Championship rally and the first since 1996.
It was appropriate that when Toyota crowned a perfect weekend in Mpumalanga with an emphatic 1-2 in the Sasol Rally that the legendary Toyota rally pair Serge Damseaux and Vito Bonafede, the most successful team in South African rallying, were on hand to witness this historic win.
Damseaux contributed no less than 73 of the 100 Toyota victories in a distinguished career that saw him win more rallies than any other driver (74) and a total of 10 championships between 1985 and 2007, all with Toyota. Bonafede partnered with Damseaux to win 7 of these championships.
Also present to witness this historic occasion was Kassie Coetzee, a prominent rally driver and works team off road racer for Toyota in his younger days, and the proud father of Elvene.
“Toyota’s achievements in rallying, crowned last weekend by the company’s century of rally victories in the national championship, are something of which all of us at Toyota can be justifiably proud,” said Calvyn Hamman, Toyota’s Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing. “Congratulations to our talented team under the direction of Glyn Hall on this latest Toyota achievement and long may Toyota feature at the sharp end of the sport.”
Team principal Hall is full of praise for his team. “We have worked hard to improve the rally Toyota Auris and made many changes for the 2011 season. I believe we have all the ingredients to build on last weekend’s success in the Sasol Rally. There is more to come from the Castrol Toyota Auris and our talented crews.”
– Credit: Toyota South Africa.