Rally tests skill and endurance
National rally champions, Mark Cronjé and Robin Houghton clinched their second consecutive championship crown by winning the Polokwane Motor Rally in their Ford Dealer Team Fiesta S2000.
POLOKWANE – National rally champions, Mark Cronjé and Robin Houghton clinched their second consecutive championship crown by winning the Polokwane Motor Rally in their Ford Dealer Team Fiesta S2000.
The winning duo also claimed the S2000 class, the top fledged category in South African rallies.
No other manufacturer other than Ford had ever been able to win this rally in Polokwane since its inception in 2011, when Jan Habig and Robert Paisley won this race in their S2000 Basil Read Fiesta.
This year, Habig and Paisley ran into trouble in the first stage of the rally when they hit a tree stump. They re-entered under Super Rally rules, but could not manage to climb their way to the top.
The same tree stump also halted the aspirations of Henk Lategan and Barry White in their Sasol Volkswagen Polo S2000. The duo also re-entered the rally, but steering problems brought them to a halt in the 10th stage on day two of the rally.
The first day of the was contested south of the city, with the second day’s stages north of the city. A stage around the Peter Mokaba Stadium ended each of the two days’ racing.
Second place went to the dealer team Castrol Toyota Yaris S2000 consisting of Johnny Gemmel and Carolyn Swan. Teammates Leeroy Poulter and Elvene Coetzee in another dealership Toyota Yaris were unlucky on the second day and were sidelined by power steering problems after a sterling performance on the first day, which saw them a mere 1,3 seconds behind Cronjé and Houghton.
Third place went to the Sasol Volkswagen Polo S2000 of Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries.
Out of the 36 entries, only 26 managed to see the end of the last stage of the rally, which once again proved to be a one of the touchest events of its kind.
