With five wins from six starts in two separate championships, the privateer Green Fuel Ford Fiesta team of Conrad Rautenbach and Nicolas Klinger is aiming to keep their championship momentum on track as the season reaches its mid-point.
In the South African Rally Championship, the 26-year-old Zimbabwean driver has an 18 point advantage after taking two wins and a 3rd place so far. 35-year-old Klinger has elected to retain his French competition license and is ineligible to score points in the domestic series.
The Green Fuel Ford pair is also contesting the FIA African Rally Championship, where Rautenbach and Klinger have been in equally devastating form, taking a hat-trick of wins, the most recent, the Rally of Zambia.
“It’s been going really well so far and the whole team is working exceptionally hard to keep it like that”, said Conrad. “The Zambia Rally was quite rough and the Fiesta was hammered a bit which has put extra pressure on the team to get everything ready for the Gauteng Rally”.
“It’s quite a change in mindset to compete in both championships: last month we were in a flat-out fight for victory at all costs and six days later, we need to save the car and make sure we get to the finish. After the Gauteng Rally, there is less than a week to the Kenya Safari Rally, so the logistics are becoming a huge challenge”, Conrad explained.
On his prospects for the 4th round of the SA series, he said: “The first day of the Gauteng Rally is a complete unknown to everyone. We will be running first on the road as championship leaders but I don’t know yet how that will affect us. Fortunately it is quite a short section of the rally. I think the whole road-sweeping issue is more psychological than real anyway”.
For 35-year-old Nicolas, the logistics are just as daunting as those of the technical team. He leaves home on the Sunday before the rally, heading to Nice and a quick flight to Paris, where he catches the late-night flight to Johannesburg.
After landing and settling in, he spends three days ‘translating’ the route notes into Conrad’s preferred style. They then watch the route note DVD, make any necessary adjustments before the whole rally is transcribed into a new book and checked against the DVD once more. The whole exercise takes just over two nine-hour days to complete. This is the life of a professional co-driver.
The Green Fuel Ford team heads into an all-action five-stage section at noon on Friday, including a short night stage on tarmac. Saturday’s 7 stages are made up of three stages, each repeated, around Bapsfontein before the SuperSpecial finale and finish at RallyStar.
The Green Fuel Ford team invites spectators to come to the service areas and chat to the team and get an autographed poster.