An analysis of the doings and drivings on day One of the Brave Hearts down there in the Cape – by Leon Botha
Mark Cronje with new navigator Gerhard Snyman predictably opened up the Toyota sponsored Cape Rally with a win in his Ford Fiesta beating Leeroy Poulter by a solid 6,2s
Perfect start for what could turn out to be the most important rally of the season.
In third spot, 1.4s behind Poulter was Lategan and White in the first Volkswagen Polo, while Giniel de Villiers missed his by now customary for this year 3rd spot.
It seemed like a family day for both the Himmel an Haigh-Smith families when Ashley in the S1600 finished behind his dad in 29th spot and Thilo Himmel in a S2000 managed to get home two better than his brother Marko in the S1600 Polo.
Guy Botterill on the other hand in the S1600 Toyota posted sort of low S2000 times in an S1600 to opened up a massive gap of 10,9s – about 1 second per kilometre over rival Leeke in a Ford Fiesta.
Further down in S1600 AC Potgieter did well to keep a charging Paulus Franken 5th in class S1600 at bay.
Tiaan Rabie and Divan de Goede led NRC2, while Theuns Joubert was in the lead in the NRC4 class.
Mark Cronje won SS2 as well and things looked good.
The wheels literary came off for Leeroy Poulter when he hit a pit wall negotiating through an irritating wiggly part of the traditional Killarney stage.
He must have seen his chances to win the championship flash past him when he realised that he was in serious trouble but could not see what was wrong. He did what a driver has to do – drive the car to the end as hard as he could with whatever was left! Strange how hard it is for me to get that simple principal into the heads of some drivers.
Henk Lategan was second fastest through the stage and with that also moved up into Poulter’s vacant spot.
Giniel de Villiers was now in what seems to be his reserved rally spot for 2015 – third.
Hergen Fekken was 4th fastest and Gugu Zulu 5th. Three Volkswagens featuring in the top 5 for the stage.
Cronje was now leading by 13,1s from Lategan with Giniel trailing by a further 4,5s
Hergen was in fourth overall spot with Ernie van der Walt in a good 5th.
Leeroy dropped 11 positions to 13th overall while in S1600 things did not work out well for Paulus Franken who dropped 17 positions to 30th – well down in the S1600 class as well.
Richard Leeke won S1600 in this stage and shrunk the gap to 10s from Class leader Guy Botterill. There is no doubt that Leeke has improved dramatically over the past season and that the Ford need not stand back for the Toyota in this class at all.
Cronje showed some more winning style and even took the first of two Mickey or shall we say Minnie Mouse stages at the Cape Gate Mall.
The most amazing aspect however was that either Leeroy’s ghost or goodness knows how they managed to get the Toyota to go, never mind post second fastest time on this stage – quite a distance away from Killarney?
Not only did Leeroy post second quickest – he as 0.1 of a single second off the winning time of Cronje.
If I am allowed the F-word – freekin Magic to say the least. From Pretoria going on pictures available – I gave that car a shot at running today – Saturday the 19th under Super Rally rules!
Poulter re-defined the meaning of never give up!
Henk Lategan did not have such a great short stage and dropped 3,5s to Cronje.
Botterill put things right in Class S1600 by posting 10th fastest overall time just behind Theuns Joubert who posted the NRC4 winning time.
After SS3 the gap between Cronje and Lategan was 16,6 while Giniel was a further 2,4 behind. Fekken needed 9,9 to get to de Villiers, while Gugu who moved up one spot into 5th was 8,4 short of Fekken.
Ernie van der Walt was in 6th with Enzo Kuun in seventh 21,3s short. At the time of writing this I am still not sure what was wrong in the Kuun camp but he was consistently slower than what his normal tempo was a few months ago.
Andrew Heine had a rotten stage dropping 16 positions to 27th overall.
Then followed the last of these nerve-wrecking stages before all and sundry went, if you look at the Facebook pictures to their luxury accommodation for a good nights rest. That would be after a 5 star meal at one or other world leading Michelin Restaurant – more pictures.
It was Cronje again – four from four!
This time Giniel moved away from third to come have a look-see what second spot looked like. I am certain that he found that quite interesting and we may just find that our won Dakar Champion decides to take home a few second fastest stage positions after this event.
Fekken was happy to cruise around 4th quickest while Lategan crawled up two spots to post 5th quickest time through the last stage of the first day.
Enzo did 5 positions better than his first run and who knows – he may have shaken off a cobweb or two and will come out guns ablaze this morning?
Leeroy only managed 12th fastest – which makes a hell of a lot more sense to me thinking about the damage on that car.
Matthew Vacy-Lyle posted the winning time in S1600 beating his team mate Botterill by a handsome one second.
Going to bed – I will not say anything more about the star quality (just now one or two more la-di-das unfriend me on FaceBook and as you know I can not afford to lose any friends there), so going to bed Mark Cronje could afford a smile leading Lategan by 18,6s.
Giniel de Villiers could also doze away with a bit of a twitch on the corner of his mouth thinking about the 0,7s gap between him and what looked like a nice place to be, second overall.
Hergen – now if you were looking for a bit of a dark horse – this is it. He may just decide that he had enough of this looking after cars and getting to the end without throwing everything he had behind it. But – going to bed he was still fourth overall.
Ernie van der Walt – sort of silent on the PR side – maintained his fifth with Enzo Kuun a little distance behind him – 22s to be exact. Unfortunately for Ernie – 22 seconds will not do it for him if and please goodness when Enzo gets going.
Gugu dropped 2 spots in the last stage and was now in 7th spot.
Theuns Joubert and Mari van der Walt led in Class NRC4 while Guy Botterill was the man in class S1600.
Tiaan Rabe and Divan de Goede in a VW Golf are leading NRC2 with Sassman and Lingeveldt in second spot.
Today will be a hectic day for every single team that takes this serious and believe me when I say that we are going to see an incredible effort from Poulter to try and shrink the point advantage Cronje will have over him if all goes well for Cronje.
Cronje will have to win the event to maximise the advantage he may have.
Matthew Vacy-Lyle will just try to put in a run as close as possible to team mate Botterill and in the end Botterill may just let him by to open the gap between him and rival Franken for second spot on the championship.
The fly in their ointment may just be Leeke who will not allow anyone to tap off or relax the pace. He wants a class win and will be determined to get it in the Cape.
So – here we go – ready and waiting for some more excitement from the far Cape where the rich and even not so famous think they are the only ones to enjoy life!