2008 Total Rally 29 -31st May 2008
author: Leon Botha
Agreed - after going over the route and stages five times and in the case of two stages 6 times each, one should be able to get very close to predicting the outcome of this rally. Right? Wrong!
If you remember last year Charl Wilken gave us all a hell of a fright when he almost totalled (if you will excuse the pun) his Subaru on the first stage of the 2007 Total Rally.
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Charl\'s attempt to \"peugeonise\" the Subaru
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If you look at the itinerary the first two cars will pull away on the Super Special Thursday afternoon the 29th of May at 16h15 and believe me when I say that it starts getting dark by 17h45 in the Ermelo area. This will mean that any delay and the last cars may run the stage in the dark!
After a single squirt of adrenaline the crews will be able to sleep with their eyes wide open through a cold Thursday night while it might just be raining outside!
If it rains it will be wet, as you have been taught in Philosophy or Logics, but it will also change a few other things. Suddenly the much expected grip will change into slip – the expected dust cloud hanging over Stage 9 will probably turn into a few cars hanging in the bush due to no grip on the loose but wet surface.
The rocky sections will play a bigger role in the wet, as crews will try to run some of the better stages on “wets” – that is of course if Herr Kok decides that the stages should be declared wet – jawol!
There are a number of other factors hanging over the outcome of this event that will without doubt be the most technical so far and will probably remain the most technical for this season. The Route Notes consist of 100 pages averaging about 40 calls per page, with stage 12 being 60 kms long consisting of 31 pages!
Trying to predict the outcome of this rally will take a bit of a Kama Sutra approach from about any possible angle. To be honest – on paper in a straight forward contest, the podium should go to a Volkswagen combo of three cars in any position split between Kuun, Habig and Fekken –not even necessary in that order.
After having a look at the TV coverage of Rallye d’Italia nothing scares me anymore and I am now convinced that you can drive around and or over anything flat out. So, in comparison there is still a lot to come from our own local drivers and that makes the Volkswagen 1-2-3 not as straight forward as it may seem at first glance.
One has to rate the chances of Johnny Gemmell and Mark Cronje a lot better after they proved that they can keep up and beat the best – albeit while they were not under any pressure during the Sasol rally.
This is what worries me as the question remains if they can actually stay up there while the pressure is being applied? Fact is, if they do, Volkswagen may have to kiss two of the podium positions good-bye.
Then sort of out of the blue, there is the Ryan factor. Scary may not be the right expression, but it is close to being scary to see how close to the limits he is driving very early in his S2000 career. Here it is also a question of if he gets away with it – the other crews will have a problem, then on the other hand his antics may just be what the doctor ordered as I predicted that the S2000 cars have a magic barrier that so far has not been discovered by any local driver. You need not worry that you will miss the discovery – mark my words you will notice it immediately if any of the drivers break through. The difference between fastest and second fastest will be around 1.5 to 2 seconds per kilometre!
The Total is technical and the S2000 driver with best balanced entry and exit speed through the many corners will be the winner – that is if it rains a bit before the event or else stage 9 will play a massive role due to the predicted hanging dust, late on day one. The stage has been graded completely and the surface is loose, this combined with the density of the surrounding plantations will block any wind from clearing the hanging dust. This may cause a three to even four minute gap required between cars, which in turn will mean that the last cars on Friday could run in the dark?
On Saturday there will not be any mercy asked or shown, as some of the teams will want to make up lost time from Friday, while other teams will need to protect what they have built up.
This will still be OK in stages 10 and 11 which are 16.3 and 17kms respectively, but then the teams will get to the mother of them all – Jessevale. This stage is 60kms long and nothing but a full blown - all out – guns-a-blazing attempt will work here, except if you are in a position where you have at least 45 seconds in hand going into this stage.
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Jan Habig and Douglas Judd on their way to a win last year.
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Jan Habig last year won this stage, which should serve as a warning to the competition as it simply means that he can actually concentrate for most of the 60 km long stage. The pressure was on from Serge as he completed the stage only 10 seconds off the pace, but Enzo in 3rd spot through the stage was 35 seconds short! Hergen was down 38 and then the gap opened to 1m07s for Jean-Pierre Damseaux . Visser du Plessis put in a N4 winning time and pulverised the opposition by taking 1m39s from second fastest Nicolas Ryan!
The N4 winning time however was 1m20 of the overall winning time.
It is interesting if not sad to note that the difference between the winning car’s time and the first A5 was 7minutes 36 seconds! Incredible?
This year the stage winning time, all being equal, should be 35minutes 25 seconds – give or take a few seconds although the fact that we will be running the stage the other way round, may have an influence. If it rains, your guess will probably be as good as mine.
All in all, this rally will take a lot of careful planning and seriously hard driving and it will not be strange if we get a bit of a surprise and see yet another new name for this year pop up on top of the rostrum.
Toyota is due for a win, but it will not be easy to push any of the three top Volkswagens out of the way.
Lets see what the weather does before we get even more clever – and needless to say if you have not booked place in Ermelo yet – you will have to sleep at home and leave around 5 every morning to be on time to see the cars start.
This is the last rally of the first half of the season before we have a short break as the Volkswagen rally will only take place on 11 and 12th July in Port Elizabeth.
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