Gauteng motor sport fans will have a great opportunity to get up close and personal with the country’s top exponents of the not-so-gentle art of gravel road rallying and their state-of-the-art rally machines when the fourth round of the South African Rally Championship takes place in the province on June 10 and 11.
The Toyota Dealer Gauteng Rally will start from Carnival Toyota close to the Carnival City Casino complex at noon on Friday, June 10 and will finish at the RallyStar Motorsport Academy near Bapsfontein on Saturday afternoon. The newly upgraded dealership, which is one of Toyota’s flagship retailers, will host rally headquarters, documentation, scrutineering and Parc Ferme on Friday.
Organised by the Pretoria Motor Club, the event, which is also a round of the Northern Regions Championship, will consist of 14 special stages covering approximately 170 km over the two days.
From the start at Carnival Toyota, the action will move to the cultural village at Vosloorus, where a short 3.7 km stage will test the rally cars and their two-man crews. They will then head out towards Heidelberg for two longer stages, “Pieter Pretorius” and “Stockwell”, covering 18 and 10.5 km respectively, before heading to the first service stop at Pieter Pretorius.
Two more stages, repeats of stage two and three, will follow before the cars return to the service park for a 45-minute service stop and Parc Ferme at Carnival Toyota.
Saturday’s action will start from Rally Star situated 4.8 km from the Bapsfontein/Delmas/Benoni intersection on the R51 between Bapsfontein and Benoni, followed by eight special stages in the Bapsfontein area. The service park will also be at RallyStar,.
The event will end with the traditional super special stage at RallyStar, where cars are pitted against each other two at a time on a parallel course with jumps and crossovers that annually attract huge crowds to the popular facility. The first cars are expected to complete the rally at around 15.00. After the traditional podium ceremony and spraying of champagne there will be a prize giving at RallyStar where food and refreshments will be available.
“Rally fans won’t get a better opportunity to see their heroes and heroines in action,” said Du Plessis. “Although the stages are a little shorter than usual there are a few more than usual, which means we have a big variety of excellent spectator points which are all easily accessible to the public.”