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| Bright Dlomo, the lesser spotted backbone of South Africa's champion rally team. |
After winning the double-header in Parys on October 16 and 17, the Toyota Gazoo Racing SA pair powered their Class R4 Toyota Etios to victory on both days of the NTT Toyota Delmas Rally in Mpumalanga, claiming maximum points with four wins from four starts and all but sealing the 2020 title in the process.
Wath the second day's racing below, with compliments from Kuluma TV, KwaZulu-Natal's real roots news programme.
“To make the victories even sweeter, we won every stage over the two events,” said Botterill, who thanked the team mechanics for keeping the car running despite the extreme heat in Delmas over the weekend. He said they had a moment early on day one, when a short circuit in one of the GoPro camera wires caused acrid smoke in the cabin, about a kilometre from the finish.
Vacy-Lyle told Botterill to put foot, because they had only three fire extinguishers in the car, but many more with the marshalls and team mechanics, Paul Gouveia and Bright Dlomo, the other half of the team.
Gouveia, who builds and tunes race cars at PG Auto Services in New Germany, said that dealing with the extreme heat was challenging for all the crews.
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| The new all-wheel drive Etios suffered in the the Highveld's high summer temperatures. |
“The radiators and intercoolers struggled with the 34 degree air and constant high revs, but we managed to work around it with more air flow,” Gouveia said.
A top drifter and rally racer himself, Gouveia joined the team in September, alongside the experienced Dlomo. They now have four weeks to fine-tune the all-wheel drive Etios for the TracN4 Rally in Dullstroom on November 27 to 28.
