Rally of South Africa day two

Within 30 seconds of arriving at the first stage this morning, Andrew managed to get himself covered in mud again. Perhaps he's a little too eager to get near the action.

Down to the business of rallying, today saw very little change in the top ten rankings. There were a few position shifts here and there, but the top 3 remained just about the same the entire day.

What was interesting to note is that several of the stages were repeated throughout the day and the drivers managed to improve their times quite dramatically the second time around. This is possibly due to the drier conditions in the afternoon, but also probably due to track familiarity. The results were impressive with some shaving almost 10-15 seconds off their times (Gemmell).

While Toyota did their best, the BP Volkswagen Polo's dominated with Habbig and Fekken doing extremely well. Although Damseaux took top times in several of the stages, it wasn't enough to unseat the the top top position holders. Damseaux himself had a brilliant rally. This will be the first rally that he has actually completed this year and he did it in style. Very impressive.

The final circuit-style stages were intense to watch. Honestly a very impressive location was chosen so it was easy to view the entire circuit at once. The times were incredibly close with several drivers clocking up exactly the same times (Cronje and Fekken).

I was particularly impressed with Damseaux in stage 13, managing to keep up with his competitor Van Niekerk despite the fact that he had no clutch. Another impressive driver was Nicholas Ryan. He has no sponsor at the moment, but hopefully that will change. He is pictured here in his plain white Auris.

All in all, this was quite a well organized event at what I would personally consider to be one of the best rally locations I've been to. There was a great combination of conditions to test the drivers and the spectator points were excellent (usually on hairpins). Hats off to the marshalls for doing a great job.

Here are the provisional results :

1. Fekken
2. Habbig
3. Damseaux
4. Cronje
5. Wilken
6. Gemmel
7. Joubert
8. Ryan
9. Kuhn
10. Van Niekerk

Well done guys!