It’s Fiesta time for Ford and Cronje in Secunda Rally
Ford’s Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton take third victory in a row and now hold a healthy lead in national points log
ANOTHER dominant performance by the Ford Performance team of Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton saw the pair chalking up their third consecutive victory in the 2015 national rally championship by winning last weekend’s inaugural Secunda Motor Rally.
Driving a Ford Fiesta S2000, they led last weekend’s rally from start to finish, winning the first five stages of the rally on the trot, and but for a slow puncture in stage nine after they clipped a fence and lost the Fiesta’s roof vent and rear wing, it was plain sailing for the Ford crew.
“With the vent sheared off we struggled with dust in the car, but the team did well to fix it and we could cruise to victory,” an elated Cronje said afterwards.
For Henk Lategan and Barry White in the Volkswagen Sasolracing Polo it didn’t work out so well. At the restart they were 26.9 seconds behind the Ford pair and quickly made up over 10 seconds in the opening stages, but their charge was ended when they clipped a gate post 5km into stage nine which broke the right rear wheel of their Volkswagen Polo.
With their retirement Giniel de Villiers/Carolyn Swan (Castrol Team Toyota Yaris) moved up into second place, but were under pressure from Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries in their return debut for the Volkswagen Sasolracing team.
Fekken slowly closed the gap on the Dakar champion, but in stage nine a broken wheel scuppered his chances of a good result.
It left De Villiers in a safe second place, 51.4 seconds behind the leader, with Gugu Zulu and his new navigator, Hilton Auffray, claiming third for the Volkswagen Sasolracing team another 32 seconds adrift. For Zulu this is the second consecutive podium result and a great return to national rallying for Auffray.
Reigning champions Leeroy Poulter/Elvéne Coetzee (Castrol Team Toyota Yaris) were fourth. They were followed by Thilo Himmel/Armand du Toit (Volkswagen Sasolracing Polo) who had problems with a misfiring engine in their car.
Guy Botterill and Simon Vacy-Lyle (Yato Tools Toyota Etios S1600) were sixth overall and winners of the S1600 class.
The only classified NRC4 team at the end of 12 gruelling stages was Theuns Joubert and Mari van der Walt (Toyota Auris), and the winners of the NRC2 challenge were Jaco and George Baker in their Toyota Tazz.
The next round of the 2015 South African rally championship, the Bela-Bela Rally, will take place on June 19 and 20 in Bela-Bela area in Limpopo Province.
PICTURE: QUICKPIC