The promising youngster Henk Lategan and co-driver Barry White in their Sasolracing Volkswagen Polo S2000 will be the first crew on the starting ramp for the 24th running of the Sasol Rally that starts in Sabie, Mpumalanga, this morning.
They will be followed by reigning South African rally champions and last year’s winners Leeroy Poulter and Elvéne Coetzee (Castrol Team Toyota Yaris) on the demanding route over a distance of 584 km between Sabie, Graskop, White River and Nelspruit.
Next on the road will be the 2012 and 2013 Sasol Rally winners and current championship leaders Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton (Ford Performance Fiesta) followed by fellow Ford competitors Japie van Niekerk and Ulsterman Gordon Noble in their privately entered NAD Fiesta.
Gugu Zulu and Pierre Arries (Sasolracing VW Polo) in their second event together will be the fifth crew to tackle the route with team mates Hans Weijs and Bjorn Degandt next up.
Giniel de Villiers and Carolyn Swan in the second Castrol Team Toyota Yaris, also in their second event together, will follow the Dutchman / Belgian duo off the start ramp, while Namibian Wilro Dippenaar and Kes Naidoo (Toyota Auris) will be the first entry in the NRC4 class out of the starting blocks.
The starting positions of the eight highest seeded drivers in S2000 as well as S1600 are pre-determined and will rotate from event to event to ensure fairness.
Competitors breaking into the seeded top eight from event to event will replace the competitor that has exited the top eight and will start in that competitor’s drawn position.
The Sasol Rally, also the second round of the FIA African Rally Championship (ARC), sees some leading teams in this series, including the Kenyan Jaspreet Chatthe and Zimbabwean Dave Sihoka (Mitsubishi Lancer Evo RC2) and Zambian brothers Jassy and Muna Singh Junior, both in Subaru Imprezas, also tackling the tough Mpumalanga stages.
They will have some local competition in the form of Rocky Reyneke and Gert Nienaber’s Mitsubishi Evo (NRC4) while Piet Bakkes and Shaun Visser, the other half of the Toyota Auris duo, also battling it out in this class.
In the highly competitive S1600 class it’s an all VW affair up front Marko Himmel/Francois Schoonbee (VE Polo R2), log leaders Paulus Franken/ Henry Kohne (Manitou Group VW Polo R2), Chad van Beurden/Nico Swartz (Beurden Transport VW Polo) and Andrew Heine/ Robbie Coetzee ((VW Polo) the first to leave Sabie on Friday morning to tackle the 15 stages covering a distance of approximately 206 stage kilometres.
They will be followed by the Ford-pairing of Ashley Haigh-Smith/ Damian van Ass (Castrol Fiesta R2). Next away will be team mates Matthew Vacy-Lyle/Schalk van Heerden (Fragram Toyota Etios) and Guy Botterill/Simon Vacy-Lyle (Yato Toyota Etios) breathing down their necks with Richard Leeke/Rikus Fourie (ATS Ford Fiesta R2) the last of the seeded teams to depart.
Today competitors will tackle five gravel special stages in the York Timbers forests around Sabie, Graskop and Pilgrim’s Rest and night tarmac stages in the towns of Sabie and White River. The rally finishes at the Lowveld Showgrounds in Nelspruit tomorrow afternoon with tomorrow’s action starting in Nelspruit at 07:50 with the traditional tarmac Spaghetti Junction super special stage.
A second tarmac stage at the Mbombela Stadium and a repeat of stage one, the super special, will be followed by five gravel stages in the Sabie and Hendriksdal areas before the final stage on grass in the main arena of the Lowveld Showgrounds.