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Photo: Rajesh Jantilal
The UK’s Ashley Haigh-Smith and Craig Parry
in the crowd-pleasing Super Special Stage of the Total Rally, held in Durban last night. |
IN a rally full of drama and sportmanship yesterday, champion
drivers Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton stopped to help Johnny Gemmel and Carolyn
Swan, who had done some alarming cane harvesting using their Castrol Toyota
Auris.
This just after Enzo Kuun and Guy Hodgson had rolled in their Sasol
Polo in the third stage of the Total Rally, which started in Scottburgh and
ended in Durban.
They crashed out of the event on stage three in spectacular fashion
within site of the finish. The crew was dazed and the car is a write-off. Kuun
was lying third at the time.
Morne Janse van Rensburg and Rickus Foure also “went surgarcane
farming” in their Polo on the second corner of the stage, according to a tweet
by Fourie.
The crashes show just how hard the other teams are racing to try
and unseat Cronje and Houghton this year.
Luckily, none of the drivers who made unplanned safaris in the
canefields were injured. The various crashes however saw stages 4 and 6
cancelled and of the thirty crews who departed to Durban yesterday, six did not
start this morning.
Finishing a surprising third place yesterday was matriculant Henk
Lategan. At 18, Lategan is the youngest driver yet in SA rallying. He is racing
in Sasol VW car number 17 with veteran navigator Barry White.
In car nr 314, S20, privateers from Pietermaritzburg, Thane Archer
and Frans de Wit, aim to have a blast with the big guns from out of town.
Yesterday’s racing culminated with a crowd-pleasing Super Special
Stage, held on tar at the old Drive-Inn.
Today’s timed rally is 171 km long, returning to Scottburgh.
The 24 crews whose cars survived yesterday will contend not only
with other racers under the influence of red mist, but KZN’s famously slippery
and unpredictable dirt roads over 14 gravel stages back to Scottburgh.
The action ends by mid-afternoon today. More details on the stages
and spectator maps at www.totalmotorsport.co.za.
