Henco Panelbeaters Rally .......... AND THE BEAT GOES ON!
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The event will take place over 12 rally stages that have not been used before. The rally will start and finish in Kinross, at Brendan Club, and will follow a route to Trichardt and the Winkelhaak Mine. If memory serves me correctly, the Sasol Rally used a stage at this mine many years ago?
National Championship and Team Total driver, Etienne Lourens and André Vermeulen in the Toy Toy Toyota will be the team to beat. Lourens has very successfully completed the VW Algoa Rally, finishing a better than just credible, fourth overall. Etienne, known for the fact that rallying is his life, will be looking for more rally kilometers to test and develop his car, while taking a win as a bonus.
Looking through the field I find no name that will upset Lourens if he has a clean run. My prediction is that he may find Jacques Botha in the newly build Pretoria Subaru/Italian Panelbeater Subaru Impreza GT to be a problem. Having said that, I have to point out that this is a new car, and new cars have the incredible habit of losing bits and pieces on their first few rallies, no matter how much super glue, Lock-tite or pure muscle went into the building process.
The Venter Motors Toyota manned by Jaco Venter and Tommy du Toit, will be up there in the top three, if Venter manages to get and keep his head together. He has the ablity, but seems to loose it especially where and when he needs to keep everything together. If he paces himself, concentrate on what he is doing, he should finish where he belongs, and that is in the top three.
Rocky Reynecke and Andre Pheiffer, should complete the top five. While talking about Rocky, it has to be mentioned that he has put in more than many other older competitors, back into the sport. He has sponsored many up and coming and also a few no-hopers, but to him the growth in the sport was always the most important thing. Henco Panelbeaters, Rocky's company, is then once again involved as sponsor of this specific rally.
The following competitors could all cause an upset: Jaco and George Baker (Agip Toyota Conquest) from Pietersburg, Philip Smit and Cobus Bohmer (Valvoline Nissan Sentra), Hennie Lourens/Menno Havelaar (Henlo Tune Up VW Golf), Jan Delport/Amanda Pretorius (Koenic VW Golf), Scott Howden/Mike Burrows (DPEX Couriers VW Golf) and Hein/Wynand van der Merwe (Synchro Motors VW Golf), Theo and Frans Venter, who uses their son's, Rudi and Jaco to navigate for them respectively.
The fastest Class N2 car around seems to be the Toyota Tazz driven by Wayne and Dave Watt.
Something not well known amongst the younger generation, is that they have a rally-legend walking around between them. Not only is he a master rally car builder, but he used to be one of the quickest drivers around. He was never satisfied to take a second, nevermind a third place, and he was seen a few times walking out of stages with his, always very expensive seat, under his arm. This, mainly because that was about all that was left of the car after he decided he could get around the specific corner, or across a bridge at about 30km/h quicker than any one else. Yep, you guessed it, Giovanni Piazza Musso, big name, great man. So when you see him on the event, do not try and give him advise, on how to approach blind-rises, where the apex of a corner lies, how to build rally cars, or for that matter anything. He almost invented most of what the youngsters are now discovering. Oh, yes and he may just get pissed off and win the class!
Guillaume and Alida Jordaan in their AutoSpeed Ford Escort Mk2 are currently leading the SAHRA series, but Callie van der Merwe and Gideon Trollip, in their super quick Nissan Sentra will not be easily beaten in this rally.
Side-ways driving will be coming from Nissan drivers Koos Roos and Dave McGregor in a Sylvia, and the two Skyline drivers, John and Steven Ogden, and Willem van Rensburg and Flip Hattingh.
Rumour has it that the Havoc TV crew will be close by to film Havoc 76 when Jose de Costa (Die Gogga) gets going in the very quick ex Botha Nissan Sentra. He and Jose Ferreira split up because according to the one, one can not drive and according to the other, one can not navigate! It will be interesting to see, which one of the two was right! Only joking - and we would like to welcome Tony Barbosa as navigator to the regional rally scene. We will watch both the Italian Panelbeaters cars in anguish!
Spectators will be entertained in Trichardt at around 8h30, Stage three in Kinross at about 9h00 and then at Grootpan Dam at around 11h00. The Trichardt and Kinross Stages are repeated at about 13h00 and 14h00 respectively. The final stage will be an all tar stage, at Winkelhaak Mine at about 15h00.
Full results and stage analysis will be on RallyStar next week.
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