The event brings challenges
BY THEIR OWN high standards it has certainly been an inauspicious start to the season: it kicked off with an uncharacteristic mistake in KZN, and then ended prematurely with an equally atypical mechanical breakage in Mpumalanga.
This after already having been delayed with a pair of
punctures – one on the first day and another on the second day of the event, and the end result is that they returned to their Gauteng base with a scant 6.5 points from two events.
But the pair will take heart from their most recent performance where their Ford Dealer Team Fiesta was unquestionably the fastest car in the event when they had untroubled stages, winning six of the first seven time trials (the stage on which they lost out was the one on which they punctured). Now they have to get to the end of a rally without drama.
Says a philosophical Cronje, in his fourth season at the wheel of an S2000 Ford Fiesta four-wheel-drive car: “It’s an overused truth but to finish first, first you have to finish and we’ve not done that yet. While we haven’t mirrored the stellar starts to the 2012 and 2013 championships, we’ve certainly had the pace to win, and that’s comforting. It is easy to get desperate when you are forced to overdrive the car to keep up, but that’s not the case and we keep on reminding ourselves that only a quarter of the season has run. At this phase of a championship the pendulum can swing back very quickly indeed.”
Ironically, Cronje feels the 2.0-litre Fiesta has never been better, both in terms of engine performance and handling. The former improved as a result of a new exhaust system, while changes to the suspension set-up prior to the Sasol Rally have made the car slightly more forgiving without sacrificing outright speed, as is usually the case.
“This event is traditionally dry and dusty, and in some ways not exactly vintage rally terrain.
But it brings its own challenges, and some parts of it are very fast so it certainly isn’t boring from a driver’s point of view! We will be starting first on the road due to the rotating seeding and it is hard to say right now whether ‘pole position’ will be advantageous in any way.”
The PMC Rally comprises 11 special stages totalling 172 kilometres of competitive driving and gets underway at the RallyStar Motorsport Academy (where all of the servicing takes place and where much of the action can be viewed) at 10am on Friday the 23rd of May. Saturday’s race against the clock starts at 9am and matters should be done and dusted by 3pm.
Cronje and Houghton invite their fans to pay them a visit at the service park, and stand the chance of being given team regalia.
author: Roadworx Communication