The fat lady has sung. The game has been played and won. Leeroy Poulter in a Team Castrol Toyota Yaris has won the Imperial Toyota Rally in Cullinan. This was his and Toyota’s third success of the year and further entrenches Poulter’s lead in the National Rally Championship.
The rally was the fifth round of the 2014 national championship. All eyes were on the event t5o see whether Mark Cronje would once again do one of his giant-killing performances in the Ford Dealer Ford Fiesta. Cronje, who started the season badly, won the two previous events and in order to keep his championship hopes alive, a win here would have done him the world’s good and would have put Poulter under a lot of pressure.
Cronje started like a race horse again on the first stage of the event to win it, and to lose the rally. A rock that punched a hole in the Ford’s gearbox necessitated a gearbox change after the stage and although the gearbox was changed in record time, he incurred a time penalty that effectively put paid to his hopes of winning.
After that, until the final stage of the day, it was the Toyota show with Poulter leading and his teammate in a similar car second never more than 20 seconds off the pace. Cronje had one more fling at the dice on day one winning the last stage.
On day two things changed dramatically as a highly energised Japie van Niekerk put a spanner in the works by winning his first stage and thanks to a not so good stage time by Fekken moved into second place. Just to make his point again he was second on the next stage and from then on he was harassing Poulter, but finished second in the end.
Much was expected of the young Dutch driver, Hans Weijs who had made third place his in a Sasolracing Volkswagen Polo, from day one. He stayed there never more than about five seconds behind Van Niekerk. His last desperate effort to catch Van Niekerk cost him the rally when he rolled out of the event on the penultimate stage.
Much to the delight of Fekken and Toyota since Fekken moved into third and a second podium on the event, while Henk Lategan moved up to fourth and Cronje could at last getv rid of the 6th position overall the he had been occupying for the day. Lategan, who ran first on the road yesterday, had a consolation prize in that he won the last stage.
Wilro Dippenaar in the S2000 Challenge Cup Toyota Auris was 6th and Gugu Zulu in a Sasolracing Volkswagen Polo was 7th, Thilo Himmel also in a Sasolracing Volkswagen camwe in at number eight followed by Hans Weijs who was scored for 9th position and the only other S2000 Challenge driver Piet Bakkes in a Toyota Runx 10th.
A final wrap with the final official scores will be published here later.
Chad van Beurden in a Volkswagen Polo, who virtually led the event from beginning to end had his win sealed when his major opposition, Guy Botterill, who second and pushing for the lead, withdreqw from the event with a broken drive shaft. That meant that second place went to Ashleigh Haigh-Smith in a Ford Fiesta.
The provisional top ten times are:
Poulter 1:37.42.3
Van Niekerk +20.5
Fekken +54.0
Lategan +1:08.0
Cronje +1:28.5
Dippenaar +4:36.4
Zulu +5:18.6
Himmel +5:41.9
Weijs 10:32.2
Bakkes +13:00.8