Dust-devils will be set loose as the Volkswagen Rally explodes in the Eastern Cape today and tomorrow. This rally is a firm favourite on the annual calendar and marks the 26th running of the event with Volkswagen and the Algoa Rally Association.
Dust-devils will be set loose as the Volkswagen Rally explodes in the Eastern Cape today and tomorrow. This rally is a firm favourite on the annual calendar and marks the 26th running of the event with Volkswagen and the Algoa Rally Association.
The event gets underway at 12.30pm today from the Volkswagen museum, Auto Pavilion, in Uitenhage. The start is the prime spot for photographs and autographs with one’s favourite rally heroes.Algoa Rally Association officials have been hard at work to create an exciting event for 2009, and the event this year will be a little different to what has been experienced previously.
“This is going to be a very exciting event,” says route director Joe Fourie. “The roads into the forest are like a highway since all the repairs have been done. The stages that will be used are the best we’ve had in three years and we’ll be running as we did in 2007, not like we had to do last year.”For the home team, the BP Volkswagen crew, the event marks their lead in the 2009 championship.
Defending champions Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries took their place as points leaders in the BP Ultimate-powered S2000 Volkswagen Polo at the Rally of South Africa after a stunning performance.
The team currently hold first, third and fifth position overall on the national rally scene with Jan Habig and Douglas Judd in second and Enzo Kuun and Guy Hodgson in fifth place. Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin are the leaders in the national A5 class in their BP Volkswagen Citi Golf.
For local rally fans the Volkswagen Rally is not just an opportunity to see some exciting gravel action. The event is a careful mix of both gravel and tar, bringing the sport – and the racers – closer to their fans. As in previous years, the grand finale takes place at Kings Beach with rally racers covering the final distance through a series of high speed hairpins in a last mad dash for the finish.
There are 12 stages waiting for rally crews over the two days, with six stages on each day. Unlike previous events, the rally will not take place in Jeffreys Bay. Instead the Kings Beach parking lot stage will be tackled on two occasions as the last stage on each of the two days. This is also the venue for the prizegiving which will take place at about 3.30pm on Saturday afternoon.
Fourie says, “There just are no funds available for spectator barriers, and since these barriers are mostly sent from Durban, it makes it a very expensive exercise.
“As safety is always of primary concern when organising the rally, we’ve taken the very difficult decision not to run in Jeffrey’s Bay this year, and rather do two Kings Beach stages instead. If the economy has recovered sufficiently by next year and we can find the funding, we’ll definitely be back in Jeffrey’s, it is one of the most popular spectator stages.”
While the rally won’t be heading down the coast, there will be extra stages in the Uitenhage area. Jagtvlakte on Friday and Nooitgedacht on Saturday will make the Volkswagen Rally even more accessible to Uitenhage residents.
As in previous events, there will be stages in the Longmore Forest as well as at the Port Elizabeth Oval Track Raceway (PEOTR), the stock car racing track on Mission Road, near Greenbushes.
There are also several activities planned for the Kings Beach stage on Saturday. Among the proposed activities are a street rod display, an action karting display and, for the first time, a quad action display. These will give spectators a bit of racing action as they perform short demonstration races on the same stage the rally cars will be using.
While the national racers will be competing in classes ranging from the top-of-the-line S2000 entries sporting all-wheel drive and the N4 four-wheel drive production cars complete with turbochargers to the A7 (2.0 litre), A6 (1.6 litre), A5 (1.4 litre) and N3 (production standard four-wheel drives up to 2.0 litres) and N2 (production cars up to 1.6 litres), the local rally racers will be in action in two regional events.
As the Volkswagen Rally is split into two days of six stages each, the regional racers will complete one full event on Friday and one on Saturday. Local rally competition received a boost from Volkswagen last year when they provided five Citi Golf rally cars to help grow the sport locally. It is these cars which will feature among the list of regional competitors.
