2017 HALLSPEED RALLY
I have been looking forward to this “come-back” for a long time, despite making a promise many years ago, not ever, never, ever to navigate for Jacques – that’s my son, again, after he almost wiped us both out during a Sasol Rally.
Late last year Jacques acquired one of the most potent and best developed Subarus in the country.
This was the same car that Schalk Burger won the championship in, during the early 2000’s after I won it in 2002 in a box standard car.
Memories, long gone but on the other hand as fresh as yesterday.
After being invited to come navigate for him on the well-known 2016 Tara Rally in Namibia – I jumped at the opportunity, forgetting my promise taken, while rolling through or rather over sawed-off tree stumps, at over 160km/h years back.
Old rally friend Eddie Verlaque pointed out my forgotten promise on the day of the rally and I had no option but to laugh and said, that I have in the past at least 20 times promised that I was going to murder Jacques for many other reasons, so one extra promise broken in motorsport would not matter.
In Namibia the car felt great and we clicked half and half by stage two of the event, but alas, the alternator gave in and the car stopped. We also suspected that the engine valves on one cylinder burned, but that was not the case as the misfire was caused by another problem.
So – it was then decided that we would do the Hallspeed Rally in Gauteng and then on the 25th of February 2017 the Klipendale Rally in the Cape. I always wanted to do two events a week apart.
So here goes, let me tell you the story of what happened on weekend one!
The 2017 Hallspeed Rally
I felt at “Rally Home” again when we left Pretoria at the crack of dawn Saturday morning.
Friend Johan Oosthuizen who came all the way from Sabie, to support and help, sat in the back of the Cruiser, looking quite worried.
I wonder why?
I was concerned about a few things, inter alia, the fact that I once again forgot to get a proper “rally” watch, and that we could still not hear each other properly through the intercoms as our new helmets did not arrive in time.
The car however was looking great, ready, willing and able to attack whatever came in its path.
I have to admit that it was great to see a few old faces, to speak to some of the younger ones who have by now also made a bit of name for themselves, and of course catch up with the normal gossip of who did what to whom.
From the general banter it became clear that there was a common factor, which was a specific navigator who succeeded in peeing most people off. I knew about him, but did not know him and did honestly not really care. I did notice that when he smiled his smug smile it looked as if rigor mortis had stepped in.
Documentation done, scrutineering behind us we decided that we deserved coffee and a scrambled egg.
I squinted my eyes every so often to make very sure of the time as we would be first car on the road – another worry, but not too much.
At 9h02 my phone rang, “We are waiting for you to start drivers briefing” said the voice!
Oh dear I forgot about driver’s briefing!
Our whole group of coffee drinkers did the 180m back to the clubhouse in under 15 seconds to get to the driver’s briefing.
My first cock-up as navigator for the day! It would also not be the last.
As we clocked in to start I swore at myself again for not having a proper digital watch. The fact that the stopwatch “arm” that was stuck for months, now suddenly started moving, did not help.
TAG Heuer nogal, genuine, not bought from a shady street dealer in Bangkok.
We sort of settled down on our way to SS1 although I was a little uncertain of an open section instruction.
Then one odo set started going haywire, but I simply switched them off, relying only on the GPS driven one.
At start of Stage One I counted down from 5 to “go” and when that Scooby power kicked in I remembered that this monster made 200m on dirt feel like 10.
We had no experience of the Jemba pace notes and had to get used to the grading of the calls. The first corner looked much tighter than a Left Three and Jacques tapped off slightly, just to make sure.
I was relieved to see that the call was correct, so was the next and the next etc.
Things felt great and I managed to gain Jacques’ confidence by being able to count him down to specific corners. Great navigation!
About four kilometers into the 11km stage, my handwritten notes suddenly turned into a puzzle. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING seemed to link up! I then made a further mistake to adjust the odo, to match the WRONG Left Nine.
The next call should have been Right but was not!
Realising, that the best I could do then was to chuck the notes and help read the road, I warned Jacques that we were on our own.
He immediately adapted his speed slightly and drove the car through almost seven km “blind”.
We were lucky, very lucky – the arrows were good and we were not caught out by a sudden corner, dip or tree stump.
After one of the best drives I have ever seen from him, we finished the stage in 7m55s to build an early lead over young Richard Leeke of 17s, with AC Potgieter a mere 5s behind him. Chris Coertse was fourth and Tjaart Conradie was fifth.
I discovered to my embarrassment that I missed page three in the notes, jumping from 2 to 4 – which explained the scrambled notes. Jacques’ performance however covered my mistake from the open world and we looked good.
Making double sure that I did not do the same stupid thing in SS2 I refolded the page corners to make paging easier.
Once again squinting my eyes to make sure of the right minute, we clocked in for stage 2. I promise you this was really no joke – you were never sure of the time.
In Stage 2 we opened the gap between us and Leeke to a more acceptable 49 seconds.
Some of the older rally hands will know the risk of ever thinking, let alone saying, “This is going to be a walk in the park!”
Stage three was the longest and most important stage of the event. 21kms over jumps, dips and around square corners and acute-hairpins.
We pulled away and all felt good! The gear indicator light clicked over from 1 to 6 in no time at all. A rather “easy” jump was followed by 740m to a narrow Left 9.
As Jacques stamped on the power out of the corner, we heard a “snap” and suddenly the car simply did not respond.
“Right rear side-shaft is gone” Jacques informed me and it sounded like a pilot telling me to put my head between my legs and kiss my ass goodbye!
We had 20kms to go!
There was no way, not the way I grew up! A rally car simply did not do 20kms with a broken side-shaft.
Jacques fiddled with a switch on the console and placed his hand back on the steering wheel. The Subaru picked up speed although the power had to be fed in very evenly. I realized that this bloody thing had a diff-lock that helped to keep it going on three side-shafts.
We were losing time and I knew the walk in the “walk in the park” suddenly changed into a leopard crawl through a sewerage farm.
The marshal gave us a time of 17m 5s – what a disaster! The 1600’s did a low 15m
Thank goodness we could replace the shaft during the time allowed between stages, as per CoC permission to all.
We made it well in time to the start of stage 4 knowing that the fun and games were now over. We had to fight make up 53s over the same stages compared to the 47s we opened up first time around.
Then suddenly this funny face popped up at my side window.
“I am lodging an inquiry against the time you got in Stage 3. You got 17m but it should have been 18. We got 15m but my stopwatch clocked 16.” “What’s your problem then?” I wanted to know. Every one gets one minute extra?
But the smiling pawpaw insisted – our time was wrong.
Why come to confront me instead of dealing with it the correct way?
Then to crown it all he said loud enough for all to hear: “You are also only allowed to service after Stages two and four”, he said for all to hear as he walked away. I thought “what the fork, who is this little clown?”
Back to business – I told Jacques that we could not be absolutely sure about the SS 3 time, so we had to take back all we could without messing it up to try and make sure of a win. I did not tell him about Blink Stefaansie.
Into SS4 which was SS2 earlier we discovered that the surface was looser than on the first run through.
The fact that Jacques did not get a lot of kilometers seat-time over the past five years showed slightly.
He tended to “over-drive” here and there and we lost a bit of time instead of making up constantly. The fact that his experience kicked in where needed to get out of a self-inflicted spot of bother, allowed me to concentrate on my job as well I could.
I counted down from a bit further than the 200m and made 100 sound like trouble to get him to brake a little earlier. Problem with this car is that should you over-brake, and you had to accelerate slightly to compensate, it picked up too much speed and you may as well have braked late!
We needed to hone our game, and do it soon, I realized.
We took back 26s in that stage, but the interesting thing was that we managed to go only 2s quicker than earlier in the morning. Again it felt as if it should have been much more!
Next up was the Stage on which our win would depend.
The fact that Leeke improved his first run time over SS4 by 8s was enough prove to me, that the leopard-crawl story was fact! He was young but had more experience already than many much older drivers and then he also had Richard snr to advise him – and of course the world champion navigator right there next to him.
We had to do SS5 fast but faultlessly!
All started well and we made the corner where the side-shaft broke first time around.
We got out of the stage making that very nervous kilometer over the famous bridge, down a 60 degree slope and up over the blindest of blind-rises safely, in 15m27s – sounds good, does it not?
Well, not if you look at the times posted first time through that stage by three S1600 cars.
Leeke, Potgieter and Coertse all did it first time around quicker than we managed second time around! All three did a slower time than their first run through, so maybe the pop face through the window had a point – the times should have been slower, I thought and then voìlá I remembered that there was a minute dispute.
So Leeke took off 24s off his previous time and Potgieter did 12 better and we needed only three more seconds to get back into the lead.
Looking at the times between Leeke and Potgieter, it is obvious that the latter’s main “problem” to catch Leeke, lay in the performance of his car. They matched each other almost to the second if you look at time improvements through the stages and the time difference through stages seems quite consistent.
Meanwhile back at the farm, we had only one stage to go and again, no space for mistakes, as the young ones were on a charge and goodness knows the whole Botha family pride and honour was at stake.
This time I made sure that I would read notes for the complete stage and so I did.
As we finished the stage I was sure that we were at least 15 to 20 seconds quicker than on our first run through!
“What the Hell” I thought with an F – we did only 10s better than our first run when we hardly had any notes!
Leeke proved that he has the ability to drive under serious pressure and improved on his morning time by 11 s, but AC Potgieter also did exactly the same, also bettering his earlier time by 11 seconds. This may convince some of you about the point I made above.
We cruised to the end happy with a great event, although worried about the final result.
We had 14 seconds in hand, but we had Henry the Great, about whom I have meanwhile heard a few stories, on our case.
And as per clue, at the parc-ferme he announced that he was “investigating a jump-start, a late clock in, a deviation from the route and one or two more incidents!”
He was the man, by far my superior in this sport. We had to be taught a lesson and he, according to his fellow competitors, the greatest since greatness, would see to it.
This was after all a serious event and his driver’s whole career seemed to depend on him finding something to make them win the event – on a technicality – because on the road it would not happen.
Wham! Bam, thank you mam.
The fun left the scene and when I asked him to come and discuss the matter away from people, he jerked his arm away, saying that he would rather not go anywhere alone with me!
Then I heard the stories – CoC incidents, other competitors, marshals, my goodness, the sport truly needs more like him!
If I think back to my young days, I thought we were not allowed to speak to the older guys and when we did, we would politely ask, “How are you, please?”
If I may make a prediction – one of these days MSA will have to listen to his “innocence” after someone gave him an eductional smack.
Long story short, we won the event on the road by four seconds, after being slapped with a 10s penalty for one of 23 or so alleged infringements we committed according to Mr Man.
Only joking – but I did not even go to ask for and inquiry to be held on what the hell I got it for – a win is a win – albeit by only 4 seconds.
Jacques drove an excellent rally to take back 118 seconds over three stages.
It was great to be back again, great to see the commitment of the organisers, the marshals and the banter of people not too sexy for their rally under-pants.
Great job done William Louw and team. The route was excellent, the notes were much better than I expected. Very impressed.
All in all, I believe we would be able to grow the sport back to where it belonged if the standard of events stayed the same.
Results:
Jacques/Leon Botha Subaru NR4 10s (pen) 1:02:50
Richard Leeke/ Ford Fiesta NR2 +04s
AC Potgieter/Mari van der Walt Polo R2 +49s
Chris Coertse/Greg Godrich Toyota Etios R2 3m40s (pen) +347
Arnold Neveling/Tommy Coetzee Toyota Tazz NR2 1m0 +611
Sybrand vd Berg/ Robbie Coetzee Toyota Run X NR2 +629
Tjaart Conradie/Carolyn Swan Toyota Etios R2 +910
Lune Strydom/Edward Strydom Toyota Conquest NR2 1m40s +1268
Hubi van Molte/Terry Illman VW GTi NR2 16m +1903
Rory Eland/Erwee Badenhorst Subaru NR4 NF
Jose de Gouveia/Megan Verlaque Toyota NR2 NF
Jose Fereira/Pierre Jordaan Subaru NR4 NF
Now for the Klippendale rally coming weekend!