OH LORD ITS HARD TO BE …….
We have once again reached the end of another rally season.
When talking to the public in general – something that happens almost daily at Rallystar it becomes clear that they have no idea about the progress or situation in the sport.
Sadly – when asked who the current rally champion is – they hover between Sarel van der Merwe or “who is that other guy with the French surname?” I presume they mean Damseaux or on the wild side – Poulter? Anyway – French or not – at least they have some idea of who is who.
Habig gets a call here and there – but goodness knows when the answer is Mark Cronje – then you must know you are either dealing with a Ford fan or a rally fanatic.
Giniel de Villiers – and Dakar is inseparable, Enzo Kuun has his following – Pretoria fans know Hergen Fekken – and that is about it.
Then there are guys who truly have no fans – or so it seems.
A little while back we did a “test” to see how many people an article of mine reached and we were pleasantly surprised when we easily broke through the 20 000 mark. That was around 9000 on Facebook and a little bit more on the website.
The figures are of no importance whatsoever as the NRC does not give us any recognition as motor scribes. They do recognise what we write when we step on a few toes – which obviously explain why we are not all that popular with them.
This weekend the NRC hosts the Bela Bela Motor Rally – in Bela Bela of course with all the championships for 2014, signed and sealed.
Leeroy Poulter and Elvene Coetzee winning the overall title in their Toyota, while the S1600 title belongs to Guy Botterill and Simon Vacy-Lyle, Wilro Dippenaar pulled off the Challenge Championship in a class that did not do his talent any justice due to a lack of entries.
When we look at possible runner-up positions for the championship then it gets a little more interesting.
Hans Weijs – the driver Volkswagen imported for the second time (first appearance in 2012) to come help save face after two miserable seasons is lying second on the championship after a difficult but fairly consistent year.
Hergen Fekken in the second Toyota is trailing Weijs by 5 points which means that Fekken will have to pull off a great result on the Bela-Bela rally and Weijs will have to cock up rather badly.
The fact that the teams did a “two run recce” over the stages may be Fekken’s biggest problem.
Why ask you?
Well you see – the “overseas” teams (and don’t forget our own one team of experts) are such masters on writing their own pacenotes on rallies that Weijs and his navigator Bjorn Degandt will according to those who know much more than anyone else (about everything to be honest), have a massive advantage over the local guys.
This did however not show on any of the Sasol Rallies where a two run recce was also used and where the positions in the end did not really differ from any other rally where the poor victims were reliant on my notes and a one run recce.
What went up was the cost for teams and not much else except the severity of damage to cars.
Watch the “corner cuts” on future rallies especially while everyone knows the so-called tracking system everyone pays for can hardly show more than movement and will probably not catch an UFO that flew straight through a stage or at least not stand up in any sort of inquiry, except if the experts are kept away as happened in the past. More about this soon.
On paper Hergen will have to win this rally and Weijs needs to finish worse than 3rd or about the only other option will be if Weijs does not finish or have serious problems.
Then further down in the field there is going to be a hell of a fight for fifth spot between Giniel de Villiers (77), Gugu Zulu (76) and Lategan (74.5)
In this case, Giniel should come out tops as he has been the picture of consistency all year long.
Toyota will deserve a 1-2 in the championship and they will probably use that in adverts that will boost the sport somewhat.
Second up to fifth can and probably will still change in the S1600 class on this rally and we will hopefully see a good fight between especially van Beurden and Botterill even though Botterill did not even have to do this event to claim his championship.
Mathew Vacy-Lyle is currently lying second overall in the championship and still has to drop the points of one event. I am not sure if they can drop points “earned” under the Super Rally rules – as that will mean that someone who finished all the events for the year and did well has to drop more points than someone who did not really finish all.
Andrew Heine and also Paulus Franken were very consistent this year. Heine is leading Franken by 2 points but Franken must still drop the points of one event. His least points earned were 4 (if the Super Rally rule stands) so the actual difference could be 6 points which will mean that Franken will have a bit of an uphill battle this weekend.
On this rally the Cronje/Ford combination will set the benchmark.
There is talks that this may be Cornje’s last event for a while, something I do not even want to think about as that will really take the core out of the sport in my eyes and my hope will fade even further – something I did not think possible. I still hope that Ford will come to the party realising or at least acknowledging what this young man is doing for them.
You can for this and a few other reasons expect Cronje to give especially the Toyota Team a hell of a run for their money and he may just be the reason why they will not get their 1-2 in the championship.
I have a feeling that a special effort will come from Hergen Fekken and that if things go according to any plan, Fekken will be Toyota’s choice to win this event and I will not be surprised if Leeroy has to, or even decide on the quiet to help Fekken into second spot for the Championship.
This could actually mean that Poulter will throw everything he has at Cronje to try to get the 2013 champion to make a mistake. Poulter has to keep Weijs behind him anyway – so thinking about it, hang on, really thinking about this – we may have one hell of a rally on our hands.
My two readers wanted to know if I will attend this event – as it was the last event I wrote the notes for after the NRC offered me an unachievable task as option for 2015 and the guy behind the scenes who “seems” to be their legal boffin, cancelled the agreement so fast his head should still be spinning due to the sudden activity.
No – I will not attend and to tell you the truth I will probably not attend any rally again until things have changed dramatically and Rallystar is also recognised and respected as part of the media. I can actually understand why this multi-million Rand sport hardly draws two paragraphs per event in all the news media put together.
Of course we will write about rallies, that is our unpaid job – probably more about rallies than ever before and we will do our best from this side to generate the changes required to get the sport back (yes back) to where it belongs.
Foremost, we need to re-establish the heartthrob of the sport – at least the traditional “organising clubs” of the past. Clubs that produced competitors, sponsors, organisers, marshals, officials, arrowers and yes as true as anything – FANS!
Then we will do our best wake someone at MSA up to realise that they cannot administrate and manage (organise) the sport while allowing some of the most unpopular people in the sport with no exceptional qualities to justify this, to control it.
On this event it is a great pity that we will not be able to compare times of stages with previous times. It would be interesting to see if drivers (and then especially the performance order) improve or change after a two-pass-recce or whether times improve due to competitors using every possible “cut” on the event and looking to gain time over the roughest spots. All the fingers point upwards – toward costs!
If Polokwane was anything to go by – prepare yourself for about 5 real finishers in the top class. I am not talking about finishers who cannot even tell you what happened on the last stages of the rally as they were enjoying a milkshake at the local Wimpy while the actual finishers were driving their hearts out.
Some Einstein said the other day – “Yes but we need to keep cars in the rally for the sake of the spectators!”
“Oh Lord it must be hard to be stu…”.
Where must the spectator come watch the cars – on trailers in the service park?
Enjoy the event.