Botterill draws first blood
GUY BOTTERILL and navigator Simon Vacy-Lyle became the first winners of the new look South African National Rally Championships when they took their Toyota Gazoo Racing Etios to a convincing threeminute win in the sugar cane fields, South of Durban, on Saturday in the Tour Natal Rally – the opening round of the season.
Second went to Richard Leeke and Henry Kohne in the ATS Ford Fiesta, and their 3min 22sec deficit may well have been less had they not suffered brake failure on the opening special stage of Saturday morning. They were followed home by Jono van Wyk and Scott Howden, also in a Ford Fiesta.
The new format for national rallying - run for the first time on the Tour Natal - sees 1.6-litre cars with front wheel drive doing battle at roughly one-third of the cost of the all-wheel drive highly modified S2000 cars from last year.
A total of seven of these new class R2 cars started the event on Friday afternoon but AC Potgieter and Mari van der Walt (Volkswagen Polo) were lucky to escape uninjured when they rolled their car on the opening stage on Saturday morning. George Smallberger and Chris Brand in their newly built Volkswagen Polo were forced to retire on Saturday afternoon after having had electrical issues since the start of the event.
The fourth R2 car home was the Tjaart Conradie/Carolyn Swan Toyota Etios, some nine minutes off the leader. The final R2 finisher was Chris Coertse/Greg Godrich (Toyota Etios) who were robbed of a much better placing when they went off the road in Stage 6.
For the 2017 season, there are additional classes being run simultaneously in their own events catering for older cars. The winners here, in the NR4 class were Lee Rose/Elvene Coetzee (Ford Escort RS), and Trevor Graham/Brian Clifton (BMW 135) in the NR1 category.