There’s a distinct international flavour to the Volkswagen Rally, round four of the national rally championship, which starts from the Volkswagen Auto Pavilion in Uitenhage at 12.00 on Friday, 11 July.Volkswagen will be fielding a strong factory team of four Sasolracing-backed Polos in the premier S2000 class, two of which will be crewed by overseas visitors. South Africa regulars Henk Lategan and Barry White,
currently third in the championship after finishing second in the recent Pretoria Motor Club Gauteng Rally, and Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin, 10th in the point standings, will be joined by Hans Weijs Jnr of Holland and Bjorn Degandt of Belgium, who are contesting the full season and are currently fourth in the championship after finishing third in round three, and Raimund Baumschlager of Austria and Klaus Wicha of Germany.
Baumschlager is the reigning Austrian rally champion – he has won the title for the past 11 years and is just eight points away from a record 12th title – and will be partnered with his regular co-driver.
VW will be hoping to build on their strong finish to round three in Gauteng and score an important home-town victory, but they will be facing tough competition from the in-form Castrol Team Toyota’s Leeroy Poulter/Elvéne Coetzee and Hergen Fekken/Carolyn Swan in their Toyota Yaris four-wheel drive cars, who are currently joint leaders of the championship after three rounds, as well as defending champions Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton (Ford Dealer Team Fiesta).
Cronje and Houghton got their title defence back on track after a disastrous start to the season – they failed to score in round one and only managed 6.5 points in round two – by winning round three and preventing Poulter/Coetzee from scoring a hat-trick of victories. They are fifth in the championship as it reaches its halfway mark with 31.5 points to the joint leaders’ 57, Lategan’s 44 and Weijs’s 43.5.
Also in podium contention are Giniel de Villiers and Greg Godrich (Imperial Toyota Yaris), who are sixth in the championship, just half a point behind Cronje and Houghton, and Japie van Niekerk and Gerhard Snyman (New Africa Development Ford Fiesta). De Villiers started strong with a fourth place finish in round one, but a DNF in round three slowed the momentum.
Van Niekerk, has shown good pace in his upgraded Fiesta and scored his best result of the season so far with fifth in the PMC Gauteng Rally. Problems in the first two rounds, which saw him finishing these events under reduced-points Super Rally rules, puts him and Snyman in eighth place in the point standings, 30 behind the leaders.
Adding to the international flavour of the VW Rally will be Namibia’s Thilo Himmel (Investec VW Polo). He and South African co-driver Armand du Toit currently lead the S2000 Challenge for older specification four-wheel drive cars and have a best overall result to date of fifth in round two. With Himmel/Du Toit no longer competing in the S2000 Challenge the fight will be between Piet Bakkes and Shaun Visser (Toyota RunX) and fellow Namibian Wilro Dippenaar and South African Kes Naidoo (PZN Panelbeaters Toyota Auris).
The rally will feature 15 special stages over the two days of July 11 and 12, with four being brand new, including the finish. Friday’s action includes two new gravel stages in the Greenbushes and Gamtoos River areas plus two familiar Longmore Forest stages and the two tarmac town stages in Jeffrey’s Bay to end the day.
Saturday features two runs over a brand new super special stage at the PE Oval and, breaking with tradition, there will no longer be a super special finale stage in the parking area at King’s Beach in Port Elizabeth. This year the VW Rally will end at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium with a 1,4-kilometre special stage around the tar and paved perimeter of the stadium.