TOP 6 FINISH FOR TEAM TOTAL AT RALLY SOUTH AFRICA

Team TOTAL completed a successful weekend in the fourth round of the Sasol Rally Championship in Mpumalanga on Saturday.  At the end of the two-day 187-km special stage Rally of South Africa, all four Team TOTAL crews completed the punishing event with three in the top six.

Highest-placed of the Team TOTAL cars was the class S2000 Toyota RunX of Jean-Pierre Damseaux and Carolyn Swan in third place, behind winners Johnny Gemmell and Drew Sturrock in a factory class S2000 Toyota Auris and second-placed Volkswagen factory pairing of Jan Habig and Ralph Pitchford in a class S2000 VW Polo.

Fourth were Fernando Rueda and Dave Lewkowicz in a class S2000 Team TOTAL Toyota RunX, with the class S2000 Team TOTAL Toyota RunX of Mohammed Moosa and Grant Martin sixth.

Veteran Team TOTAL member Craig Trott and co-driver Robbie Coetzee were 11^th overall and third in class A6 in a Toyota RunX.

The event started with three special stages in the Warburton area west of Ermelo on Friday, and finished with the longest special stage in South African rallying, the 53-km Jessievale monster that always has a significant outcome on the final rally result.  It was no different this year and several of the front runners dropped out, but all four Team TOTAL cars came through unscathed.

Damseaux and Swan were fifth at the end of the day despite being slowed by a puncture on special stage 3, Rueda and Lewkowicz were sixth after experiencing an engine misfire in the middle of stage 3, Trott and Coetzee were 13^th and Moosa and Martin were 14^th after power steering problems on stage 2.

Saturday saw the rally move to the Panbult area for eight special stages, run in overcast and cold conditions, before returning to Ermelo for the two final super special stages over a spectator-friendly 3,98-km course run by two cars at a time.

For the three Team TOTAL crews in class S2000 it was their best result of the year to date.  Moosa and Martin, in their second event back since their horrendous accident in round two in the Western Cape in March, were clearly back to their pre-accident pace and might well have finished one or two places higher had it not been for the time lost on stage 2 and a 1 min 40 sec penalty for lateness taken after fixing the power steering in the service area.

Damseaux was pleased to be on the podium again after a lean period on the country’s gravel roads.  A past winner of the Swartland Rally in the Western Cape and a multiple former Western Province rally champion, he has teamed up for the first time with another long-standing member of Team TOTAL, Carolyn Swan, a multiple national class champion.

Rueda and Lewkowicz had clutch problems on Saturday, but otherwise had a relatively clean and uneventful second day.

Moosa, the reigning class A6 champion who has moved up to the top S2000 class this year, was happy with his and Martin’s performance.  “We were unlucky to have all the fluid drain out of the power steering at the start of the second stage on Friday after we encountered steering problems on the first stage,” he said.  “Jean-Pierre kindly lent us a spare steering rack, but we incurred a lateness penalty after fixing the car in the service park.  As a result, we started behind a number of slower cars in the crucial stage 3.  Although we caught them up, we were severely hampered by their dust and lost a lot of time on what was the longest stage of the rally by far.”

The ever-consistent Trott, like Damseaux and Swan, a member of Team TOTAL since 1998 and a multiple national class champion, made the most of his experience to survive what was the toughest rally of the year in terms of prominent retirements.  “I’m not as quick as I used to be, but you first have to finish to score points and that was our objective this weekend.”

STORY BY: Peter Burroughes Communications

PICTURES BY: Motorpics