The VW Rally delivered on its promise of a closely contested competition across the four makes of car in the S2000 class. The technical nature of the special stages in Longmore forest tested both the endurance of the vehicles and the skill of the teams for a close fought event through most of the two days.
The rally moved straight into Longmore from the ceremonial start in Uitenhage and immediately claimed the scalps of a number of high profile competitors. Both Charl Wilken and Japie van Nirkerk rolled their S2000 cars within kilometres of the start as the field adapted to forest special stages again after the flat and open mealie field stages of the previous two events.
As the field settled down it became clear that the Team Pirtek Peugeot 207s had moved up a notch in performance. In the first stage Hein Lategan was right on the pace of the top contenders, including championship leader Conrad Rautenbach. In the second stage of the day, the longest on the event at over 34 kilometres, Hein put a marker down by recording the fifth quickest time, a time that fell short of the stage winning time by just on a second a kilometre, a fraction of a second faster per kilometre would have seen him second quickest on this stage.
By the end of the first day Lategan was in a very satisfying sixth place overall. With just 1,5 seconds separating him from Jan Habig in fifth and with a gap of 11,7 seconds back to Rautenbach the scene was set for a mighty three-way tussle on day two with the focus on a 4th place or better finish.
During the first stage on Saturday Hein started to experience difficulty in selecting third gear, a problem that got worse as the event went on and eventually forced his withdrawal from the rally.
Visser du Plessis battled a number of minor problems in the early part of the event that dropped him down to 15th place for the day. The second day started not a lot better with the car stranded on the sump guard on a ridge in the road for 20 seconds. From there Visser recovered to finish 12th in the overall standings. He scored a notable 4th quickest time on the penultimate stage of the event.
STORY BY PEUGEOT
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