THE MOUNTAINS DELIVERED AGAIN.
author: Leon Botha
The mountains delivered once again in August during the Osram Rally, but unfortunately only for about two thirds of the rally field and if ever the signs were there that this illustrious rally with more stories to its credit than probably most other rallies in South Africa put together had reached the end of its road - this is it or shall we say, "that was that?"
Read on and the story will unfold...
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Snow on Friday morning!
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On Friday 20th August 2010 the day before the event we woke up in Europe or so it felt? The world around our hotel was covered in snow and the temperature dropped to well below freezing point!
This was without doubt not the conditions either Jacques or I expected and I considered keeping my pyjamas on underneath whatever else I had to wear.
After trying various tricks to defrost the windscreen and get the car to squeeze water past the ice blocking the channels in its engine - we eventually got under way and I could not help but stop here and there to take some pictures. It was simply an amazing sight, a sight that the missus would have paid good money for. This time however she had to tend to the businesses that brings in the money while I do route notes - or so I thought!
From a Route Note perspective I did not know what to expect for rally day - and hesitantly started off towards the stages for the final check of the roads before the rally the next day.
A local farmer whom I met on my way to the reception desk of the hotel earlier, predicted that the snow would disappear and that it would be a "nice" day on Saturday - I looked around me seeing a solid sheet of snow and thought, "Ja, whatever!"
I mean it looked like Rally Sweden or Finland or something to that effect, while it was one day before the event and he predicted would be "a nice day"?
To avoid driving about 75kms to the start of Stage 1 we cut reverse direction through Stage 2. The end of the stage as it would be run, was covered with snow, but early morning Mrs Farmers and kids on their merry way to school in their Bonsai Oshkosh trucks (mostly Toyota Hilux bakkies) opened up some tracks and hardly 2kms into the stage there was no snow on the road anymore and we drew dust from the surface!
The outside temperature did however drop to -10°C and I could not believe that sheep and cattle were grazing in the field as if nothing was wrong?
The road surface was stable and offered plenty of traction in relation to wet conditions, but I knew that the traction in 2009 was much better and that we would not get the same times through stages as then.
The water over low-water-bridges was frozen solid and the car jerked as it skidded for half metre at a time every time we hit one slightly sideways, but we cracked the ice as we went along and on our return journey the only signs of ice were on the sides on the bridges.
The usual Friday 'traffic' in this area tested our nerves to the hilt as we had to anticipate traffic from the other direction coming around corners on the wrong side of the road and to crown it all - we forgot the video camera that would at least have made good U-tube footage if push came to head-on, at home?
Doing the notes and check runs for this rally have always been scary - but then I always run into the fantastic arguments of certain rally experts who have never done better than 123km/h on a highway let alone gravel road, or competed in real anger on a rally (oh gosh they do believe they have been there, done it and forgot the T-shirt in the toilet) to get the true feeling of what it was like these days - and not 18 years ago. If they had any idea they would know that you could not do proper note calls at 60km/h - not while testing the calls for the cars of today!
A number of top teams already indicated to me that they would like to strap a few of these so-called experts into a proper rally car and take them over for instance Heuningneskloof or lets go for Clanville, in anger - now that should get us some serious money for testing throw-away nappies!
It is sad to see how far removed some of the organisers and so-called 'ex-experts' are from what is really going on in rallying these days? The reason is probably because they do not believe that there is anything anyone can teach them. They simply have been blessed knowing all the answers!
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"Chucky" on its way to destruction! Picture Jaco Louw
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One so-called expert (the worrying part is that he is actually a role player) told me before the event that he thought I made a mistake to recommend the cancellation of the first part of Heuningneskloof as he went up the mountain and it looked safe to him?
A bit of a lob-sided argument followed and I mentioned that the competitors would have the opportunity to give their input after going over that section to get to where the stage started! I am still waiting for his apology - but then again you must know that when these guys are wrong it is also someone else's fault!
This rally will still have some repercussions - mark my words and it will also be proven that to be in charge of … - wait lets leave that little "problem" for another (hopefully - soon) time!
All I can say is that if what I saw and heard at the Osram are going to last - we are in serious trouble or like an important role player said, "Stick around, don't go away! You are going to see the implosion of motorsport in South Africa soon!"
I have to agree after experiencing a serious display of a totally misplaced power, which is a matter that will have to be sorted out at the highest possible level.
When all was ready and done the rally kicked off early on Saturday - and believe me there was absolutely no snow to be seen after the world were covered the previous day. Sorry Mr Farmer and also a belated apology to my wife who got into her car on Saturday morning and raced through to come and look at the snow! Oh Lord was I in trouble and the pictures I tried to show as proof did nothing to help!
Notwithstanding many other problems on and with the rally, one thing stands out - it certainly is the best rally of the year if judgement stops with the roads through the stages.
A few years ago we had to do our own "notes" for this rally - something many of us could not really do and the fact that half were not wiped out was amazing. Before that era we did the rally 'blind' not really knowing what waited on the other side of every blind-rise or crest as they are called today.
We still tell the tale of Geoff Mortimer and Spotti Woodhead who went down a mountain in a Quattro after "thinking" that the road over a blind-rise went straight!
We still talk about the "wet-one" of 2002 where half the field left for home after the first stage "choosing" their various excuses to cover up being scared to death!
Even with Route Notes - this rally is not your mate and I cannot even hope to describe the actual guts displayed by the drivers to our regular readers.
Going into this rally has always been a nerve-wrecking experience. You always greet family and friends a little bit more seriously, you look in the safe to check on your latest will, you phone your broker to ensure that the clause covering your motorsport activities was in place, you pay the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker before you leave to go test your own nerves and skills to the hilt in the mountains around Barkley East
Then when you believe that you are really ready - that you have truly looked at the DVD properly and by now have even checked your own notes of last year - as you approach the crests one after the other - you can only hope that neither your time or that of the navigator was checked on the big board Upstairs!
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She loves me...she loves me not....
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It is much like picking the little petals of a flower …"she loves me, she loves me not…." As slight twitch too much to this side, a few kilometres per hour too much, even a few too slow could make a huge difference!
In rallying of the past we spoke about "moments", meaning "close shaves". These days you have to drive from moment to moment if you intend being in between the top runners. The moment (if you will excuse the pun) you can think back and smile, believing that you had a great corner or that you drove well you will find out that you have lost about a second per kilometre because you dared think about history instead of concentrating on the next object.
The idea is to know that you are slowly but surely busy dying!
Then after you completed the stage and you eventually get time to think about it, it will be a bit of a blur as your subconscious mind tries to block the nightmare out, then only will you know that you were really trying or not!
How do I get you to understand this? It is sort of like having sex with the neighbour's wife in the living room while he quickly went to fetch you another beer in the kitchen next door! I suppose that will do a bit for the adrenaline - but clicking to sixth over a crest - nothing tops that!
The first stage of the event was 30.03kms in length. Hergen Fekken and Pierre Aries were first on the road and they were going to test the water to see if the earth was flat or rounded!
When they came out in a time of 15min 28.1 seconds - the few privileged onlookers must have thought that the winning time on this stage would be in the order of 15minutes flat?
Surely Hergen would loose at least 20 or so seconds sweeping these slippery stages?
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Hergen and Pierre bouncing along...
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Big mistake - Enzo won the stage but managed to clip only 1.6 seconds off the sweep time!
Conrad Rautenbach posted third quickest time 9.1s slower than Kuun's winning time and the young man realised that this rally was not your mate and a little bit of over ambition could take you out - Big-Time.
Jan Habig was 0.2 of a single second slower than Conrad while Visser du Plessis posted fourth fastest time, beating Pirtek team mate Hein Lategan by half a second!
Japie van Niekerk and Robin Houghton were 7th with Nic Ryan and Armand du Toit in 8th spot.
Jaco van Dyk and Des de Fortier managed 9th while Gemmell and Sturrock posted an unfamiliar 10th fastest after a flat wheel caused by a rock that also put paid to the efforts of the luckless Basil Read Bizhub Ford team of Charl Wilken and Greg Godrich.
If ever there was an event where I would have liked to see this team in action through the racing-lined-stages, this was it. They always put in a great effort on the notes before, during, and even after events and if there is an event where that aspect is important - this is it!
The team had to withdraw the Ford after stage One due to the fact that there was no servicing allowed, in order to save further damage to the gearbox.
We will have to wait for the Swartland Rally to enjoy the Basil Read spectacle!
Tjaart Conradie and Rikus Fourie had a massive roll in stage One and sadly that will probably put paid to their 2010 efforts.
Dolf Coetzee and Jacques Nel also fell out in this stage.
The very tricky stage 2 over 17.47kms was won by none other than Hergen Fekken and the 4.2s advantage over Kuun, also gave him the lead in the rally.
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Johnny Gemmell and Drew Sturrock
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Gemmell got his act together despite a horrible sleepless night due to a heavy bout of flu and posted third fastest time through the stage.
Habig again claimed 4th spot, while Castrol Toyota's Mark Cronje and Robert Paisley managed to regain pace after a disastrous stage 1 to get 6th spot behind Conrad Rautenbach in the Ford.
Amlay and Yusuf had a bad stage battling with the N3 Toyota, while Japie van Niekerk and Robin Houghton had a quick roll when they ran out of space around a corner!
The mother of rolls however belonged to Jaco van Dyk and Des de Fortier when they wrote off the Polo after the tracking devise emergency buzzer distracted them going into a very fast corner! It will be interesting to see what happens in this case where the damage ran into something like R700K? Will anyone at least have a bit of sympathy?
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A sad sight....Jaco and Des after their serious roll!
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The stage was stopped and as the chopper flew over the car during the accident the pilot immediately flew out to get some medical assistance. I have to say that it took quite a while (30 minutes or so) before it flew back over us with the medics on board? Then after another delay of about half hour the 'ambulance' passed us and much later it came out with Jaco aboard while Des got a lift out of the stage from the CoC.
Then - low and behold it was discovered that there was no doctor available at the local hospital and the story goes that the 'sister' in charge would not go there as it was too dangerous? As I say that was the rumours but truth is that the chopper flew Jaco to Bloemfontein.
After an two hour or longer delay - the stage was declared open, but the last 11 cars were instructed to do a 'drive-through"!
Meanwhile the leading cars were already eating up stages three and four obviously while there was no chopper available should another emergency arise?
No one had any cell phone signals at the end of stages One or Two and we could not find out what the situation was with the Basil Read team, who had rolled in Stage One etc.
Spectators were driving up and down in the stages - causing my heart to stop. A confusing message came over the radio while we were standing waiting for the cars at the end of SS2 that car 28 was involved in an accident - while it was actually car 45 that of Tjaart Conradie!
Despite an attempt at regrouping the cars the last 11 or so cars stayed separated from the rest and they also had to cruise through stage 3. This meant that at 14h00 that afternoon this little group had done ONE stage of the rally!
The split of cars meant two important things - the TV crew could hardly be expected to cover the last batch of cars which meant that class winners such as Gugu Zulu, Megan Verlaque and Ashley Haigh-Smith would not really get any worthwhile coverage. The "drive-thru's" also took away important stage kilometres from competitors to make up any time on those who were ahead of them. In short, 11 from 31 cars were actually not really involved in this rally although they also paid good money for the privilege?
It is beyond me why the organisers could not, especially after the huge delay to get medical assistance to the crews, decide to let the remaining cars drive through the stage after lets say 30 minutes? This would have kept the event alive for all competitors who came to compete 880kms from almost everywhere?
The worst aspect was the fact that the 11 'reserve' teams were allowed to race through stages where spectators and other people drove around at will because of the total lack of control over traffic in stages! In Stage 5 no less than 8 cars were driving IN and out of the stages while three cars were already approaching from the other side! Imagine Gugu Zulu hitting a spectator car in full flight coming over a blind crest?
Nice thought - is it not? Especially if you think that at that stage there was still no chopper to react to such an emergency? It would in any case not have been able to carry half the people injured to hospital - let alone remove the dead, anyway?
Meanwhile the fight between the front-runners was on!
Mark Cronje made a serious comeback after hitting a rock in SS1 and recovering somewhat in SS2 by taking a stage win in SS3.
Rautenbach also got the feel for the mountains and posted an excellent second fastest time, only 0.4s off Cronje's blistering pace!
Habig was third fastest with Douglas Judd strapped in next to him over the scary, but exhilarating Stage 3 called Clanville.
If ever there was a way to describe a stage it would be to call this one a "roller coaster ride" - the rally cars simply suck onto one of the fastest gravel roads that disappears over one after the other crest at speeds that would make any corrupt metro cop smile from ear to ear!
Precision driving and commitment to the notes are the only way to get through this one fast - real fast and slight hesitation will simply mean loss of time and as you can see in the analysis - a second on rallies these days means one or even two positions down the list!
This is pure magic and I have no doubt that we will all miss the traditional mountain stages - at least until we can afford to run a proper rally with all the safety measures, communication, control and media coverage in place.
Japie van Niekerk retired his Auris after the roll in SS2, while Johnny Gemmell struggled with a misfiring Auris and only managed 10th fastest time through this stage which dropped him to 7th overall.
Hein Lategan and Johan van der Merwe moved up to 5th spot overall while the Top4 remained unchanged from the previous stage.
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Hein Lategan and Johan van der Merwe in the Pirtek Auris - Picture Jaco Louw
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Stage 4 was a short and sweet affair.
Enzo pulled the stops and beat second quickest Habig by 1.9s Cronje was third quickest and Rautenbach 4th.
The incredible pace required through the stages started to count on Hergen and he could simply not afford to push any harder without going off the road as the covered surface that awaited him hardly offered any direct traction. Every corner required at least a metre more that the following cars would need as they used the tracks opened by him. Last year during the 2009 rally, the traction was much better due to some timely rain and the fact that large sections of the road were graded shortly before the event this year made driving very, very difficult and also risky!
Fourth or even better, fifth on the road would be where you wanted to be!
Gemmell was still completely off the pace and the fact that he suffered from flu did not help him at all - especially not going up and down on the mountainous roads.
It was great to see that Visser du Plessis and Hein Lategan stayed basically together generating maximum publicity for the Pirtek Team. It is actually good to see a private team so well run and in the face of the supporters and general public!
There was a bit of movement in the overall positions as Enzo took over the lead from Hergen opening a gap of 5.6s
3. Habig +17.1; 4. Rautenbach +19.6; 5. Lategan +66.2; 6. du Plessis +75; 7.Gemmell + 100.7; 8. Damseaux +104.6; 9. Joubert +127.3; 9 and 10th Moosa +135.
Leeroy Poulter in the A6 Imperial Toyota RunX led the two-wheel-drive brigade, followed by Gugu Zulu in an A7 Polo.
Megan Verlaque led N3 using every bit of her experience to stay ahead of Rallystar's Stefanie Hugo in a similar car. This was Stefanie's first ever meeting with the mountains and the long nerve-wrecking delays between stages did nothing to help the situation.
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Stefanie Hugo getting ready for action in the N3 Class.
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Ashley Haigh-Smith in the A5 Auris elected to cruise through the rally to secure his first championship win!
Then - it was time for the 43.54 super quick Wartrail, stage 5!
Gemmell took the "War" part seriously and posted an incredible time of 21m39.3s; which was 47s quicker than his winning time last year despite the fact that the surface was looser here and there. A section was however made wider and repairs have been done over a stretch where it was quite tricky in 2009. Still his 2010 time will be quite hard to beat!
Enzo was 2nd fastest, 11 seconds slower than Gemmell, while Cronje managed 3rd fastest 13s off Kuun's pace and 24 slower than the winning time. This was incredible!
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Conrad Rautenbach and Peter Marsh in the Ford
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Rautenbach's 4th fastest time - that he incidentally shared with Hergen, was good enough to move him past Habig into third overall.
Habig had a quiet stage.
In the Class N3 battle Stefanie and Willem Hugo battled to get the road and the Route Notes to tally - and they lost some time while Stefanie tried to rate the corners and Willem tried to catch up! Once again - the nerve tapping quality of this rally came to the fore - Willem was so flustered that he did not think to take a distance on the notes to pick up his point again!
Funny?
Not really - I have heard of much bigger boobs on this one! It is at least better that the drivers know they are off the notes than think the navigators have them under control - especially over a crest that Siamese Twinned with a right or left Nine?
Gemmell moved into 5th spot overall after his mind-boggling cavalry charge through Wartrail, moving both Lategan and du Plessis down one spot.
Mohammed Moosa slipped past Joubert in their event long dice, while Gugu Zulu got the better of Poutler on overall positions.
The only gap of less than 5 seconds through the field was between Moosa and Joubert.
Hergen now not first on the road anymore after a re-group (that also caused its fair share of debate) won the stage from Enzo by 1.3s while Enzo surely only wanted to protect his lead.
Mark Cronje did well to post another top three stage time, while JP Damseaux also came to the fore on this one - posting a very credible 4th fastest time.
Rautenbach did not have the best of stages and Habig managed to close the gap on him to a achievable 2.2s
Abduraghman Amlay and Garief Yusuf eventually called it a day in N3 after a horrible run filled with various problems with the car.
No changes in the Top10, but for Joubert and Moosa again dong a swap! Cronje was now also knocking on the Top10 door 16s behind Moosa.
Stage 7 would be the last stage of the rally as the back teams ran into darkness.
Rautenbach effortlessly sorted out the Habig threat and posted a winning time over the stage. Enzo whom we expected was going to take it easy proved once again that you do not accept a win or anything else in rallying. You simply drive committed until the end and basta! So, he posted second quickest time!
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Enzo looking quite relaxed at speed through stage 2
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Johnny Gemmell and Drew Sturrock was 3rd quickest through the stage, with Habig and Judd in 4th and Cronje and Paisley in 5th.
There were no changes in the overall standings in this stage and in the end a penalty that Gugu got saw him lose a place to Leeroy Poutler.
It was interesting to see that the top three positions of the rally were actually predicted by the outcome in Stage 1?
This was an event where so many permutations played a role that I felt sorry for the organisers, it was also an event where I truly had to bear the brunt of pressure because I dared place the safety of competitors first, and then I also experienced a motorsport career low landing in a huge argument about the current situation in the sport and matters beyond that!
It is sad to hear a number of people say that they are so tired of the in-fighting instead of seeing any progress in the sport and I find more and more reason to reconsider my involvement in the sport I love most of all!
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The Podium - Hergen and Pierre, winners - Enzo and Whatsisname, 3rd spot Conrad and Peter
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We have the best marketing tool - we are in-line with the worldwide trend and growth in entertainment - we have the medicine for South African depression - the only problem is the bottle is child proof and it does not seem if we have the people or the knowledge to open it up?
The next rally is the Swartland Rally on 17 and 18th September around the Mooreesburg Malmesbury areas.
The roads are in great nick and the Route Notes will be ready for distribution sooner than normal. All we are waiting for is to see how many entries there will be before we place the order!
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No snow??? The Missus on Sunday morning.
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