The Toyota Gauteng Dealer Rally that will be held next weekend has only received 30 entries for the final national rally championship round of the Sasol SA National Rally Championships. The entries are among the lowest of the year. The total number of entries for the event stands at 53. Altogether 23 teams have entered the northern regions championship that will form part of the Toyota Gauteng Dealer rally.
Altogether 17 Class S2000 cars have been entered. Among the entries is Fernando Rueda in a Team TOTAL Toyota RunX. Rueda has announced that this will be his swan song on South African Rallying. His S2000 car has already been sold and will be going to Namibia after the rally. It may also be the last time that the S2000 Ford Fiesta of Conrad Rautenbach will be seen in action in South Africa as he had indicated at the beginning of the year that he would use this year to sharpen his skills for the WRC events in 2011.
Jannie Habig in a BP VW Racing Polo will have his regular co-driver, Ralph Pitchford, in the left hand seat. Pitchford was not available for two rallies as he had to compete in the Silk Way Rally in Russia, an off-road event that is part of the World Cup Off-Road championship.
Class S2000 debutante, Leeroy Poulter, will have his second outing in the works Castrol Toyota Auris with co-driver, Robert Paisley. Poulter, who impressed on his first event, The Swartland Rally, with a top ten finish in his first rally behind the wheel of a S2000 car. He has already won the Class A6 Class championship for 2010.
The title race for the overall co-drivers championship has already been settled, but the Toyota Gauteng Dealer Rally will decide the Driver’s championship. Here Enzo Kuun is sitting pretty with a 21 point lead in the championship and as things stand it will be more of a case of who will be second.
In A7 it will be a tussle between Gavin Cronje in a VW Polo and Gugu Zulu in a similar car. N4 has also been won by Danie Stassen and only one N4 entry has been received from Murray Lloyd in a Subaru GT.
The N3 tussle is close with Robson Maganzi in a Ford Fiesta ST leading Megan Verlague in a Toyota RunX by two points. In A5 Morne J van Rensburg also has already made the class championship his.
It is interesting to note that where N4 was one of the biggest classes in the national rally championship up about two years ago, it has virtually died out. At the time of its introduction it was seen as one of the classes of the future that would ensure the sustainability of the national championship.
Class A7 and Class A6 are also dying slow deaths, while the number of entries in class A5 is down by about half compared to the start of the season. It is a very worrying situation and how it is going to be resolved, only time will tell.
– Credit: Motorpics.