The Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa team produced two solid results that sees The Citizen Motoring Toyota GR Yaris still in the hunt for an overall podium place.
Mark Jones and navigator Kes Naidoo banked fourth in the NRC2 class of the 2026 National Rally Championship this past weekend. Picture: Stefan van Niekerk
Friday’s Round 6 through the Longmore Forest was everything I expected it to be. Fast, natural gravel roads with big drop offs and trees everywhere.
This meant that some parts were muddy, some covered in small pebbles. You also had the dark shadows and then blinding sun to deal with.
Was it bit scary? Of course it was. I am at the stage in my life when my medical aid card starts pinging the moment I look at the car.
Mental fatigue
The stages at Longmore are long and over 20km. There were no cute short stages for you to take a mental break.
You must concentrate for an extended period or end up in a bank or stream or something. The mental fatigue was real.
Even the seasoned drivers were making silly mistakes late in the day and early evening that cost their teams dearly.
In the end, I just wanted to survive, to get us home and out of the final night stage. This we did much to the relief of our entire TGRSA team.
Rain and mud
Saturday’s Round 7 around Uitenhage and Despatch switched things up completely and turned into a battle with the weather rather than the stopwatch.
Rain flooded the opening stages so badly that organisers considered calling the round off altogether. But it started to clear and the rally was reduced in length.
It would now consist of two very short 2km spectator stages, three runs at the 6km spidersweb stage and only one at the longer 23km Vlaktes stage.
How hard could this be? Extremely hard was the answer. Because by lunchtime we had only done 10km of the slowest, but most demanding day of rally I have done so far.
Back in the game
In the end, we were dirty and covered in dust and mud. Our car was covered in mud. It had a few battle scars. But we had brought the little pocket rocket Toyota GR Yaris home.
Not only had we got the bad juju out the way from the previous two rallies, where we did not finish, we were also back in the points with a fourth place in both rounds.
The double finish sees us having successfully completed five of the seven rounds of the 2026 National Rally Championship.
And with the Algoa National Rally results now ratified by Motorsport South Africa we have moved up to second in the NRC2 class standings on 95 points.
This puts us 37 points behind championship leader Bruce Swatton on 132 and eight clear of third-placed Lynton Swatton with 87 points, with one round of the season remaining.
To finish was important
“In general, a great weekend,” said team manager Leeroy Poulter. “We’ve at least completed five of the seven rounds this year, which was good after our two DNFs – it was really good to bounce back and that was really important.”
TGRSA now turns its attention to the TRAC N4 Rally at Dullstroom on 30 and 31 October, the final round of the 2026 National Rally Championship season.
