Leeroy makes it a hat-trick
AFTER a tough duel between the leading championship contenders, Leeroy Poulter and Elvéne Coetzee (Castrol Team Toyota Yaris S2000) won last weekend’s Imperial Toyota Tshwane Motor Rally.
It was Poulter’s third consecutive victory in the SA National Rally championship, and also secured a double podium for the Castrol Team Toyota with Giniel de Villiers and Carolyn Swan finishing runners-up – just under half a minute adrift of their team mates.
The outcome of the rally, the sixth round in the series, was hanging in the balance until the penultimate stage when Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton (Ford Performance Fiesta) fell by the wayside due to steering problems with their car.
Up to that point, with two stages to go, Cronje led by a margin of only 1.3 seconds. The Ford’s woes deprived spectators of a nail-biting finale to the dusty rally in and around the town of Cullinan in Tshwane.
Getting lost in the excitement of the battle for victory was the mighty tussle between De Villiers/Swan and the experienced Volkswagen Sasolracing crew of Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries. The two teams were swopping virtually identical times in the stages, and at the finish the difference between them was only 7.3 seconds in De Villiers’ favour.
Gugu Zulu and Hilton Auffray (VW Sasolracing Polo S2000) drove a steady race to secure fourth position.
They were followed by team mates Thilo Himmel and Armand du Toit, scoring a rare race finish in fifth, followed by Ernie van der Walt/Greg Godrich (Vecto Fuel Toyota Yaris) in sixth po- sition, in the process also winning the Northern Championship regional rally overall.
Theuns Joubert and Mari van der Walt (Salom Agri Toyota Auris) were seventh and won the NRC4 challenge.
The battle royale in the S1600 class was highlighted by the spectacular crash of log leaders Matthew VacyLyle and Schalk van Heerden. The pair hit a big jump in stage eight and their Fragram Tool Toyota Etios R2 landed badly, causing it to roll over at high speed.
Luckily both of them were unhurt. The S1600 class victory went to Guy Botterill and Simon Vacy-Lyle (Yato Tools Toyota Etios R2).
The seventh and penultimate round of the 2015 South African Rally championship, the Toyota Cape Rally, is scheduled for September 18 and 19 in the Western Cape. – Motorsport Correspondent