Recap: VW Rally 2009

It was a tough weekend for the Castrol Toyota rally team in the Eastern Cape who had high expectations for Johnny Gemmell and Peter Marsh to close down their small championship deficit but it was not to be.

The S2000 Castrol Toyota Auris title challengers snatched the initiative when the crews hit the gravel stages with Gemmell storming into the lead of the Volkswagen Rally after six stages, ending Friday’s run with a slender three second lead over title rivals Hergen Fekken/Pierre Arries’ VW Polo.

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Gemmell and Marsh were quietly confident of building on their early lead as the Castrol Auris was strong on the gravel stages and Saturday’s route had five rough surfaces on the schedule. In the first stage, the Castrol Auris developed a serious misfire and Gemmell lost 35 seconds to Fekken, dropping to 5th overall.

With no service before the first Longmore forest stage, Gemmell managed to affect a temporary repair and set a respectable time in stage 8, clawing back some time to place 4th overall. The championship challengers set the fastest time in the 48 km long 9th stage to move up to 2nd overall and were able to fend off the VW crews chasing hard until the misfire returned. Gemmell hung on to third place and with one stage remaining, was 1.2 seconds ahead of Jan Habig/Douglas Judd’s VW Polo.

The final 1.19km stage at King’s Beach was crucial as Habig took more time from Gemmell, dropping them off the podium and into 4th place.

Gemmell - "I really thought we had a chance on this one. We won all the dirt stages on Friday and with five gravel stages on Saturday, we were in a strong position. We had shock absorber problems in stages seven and eight but the misfire killed off our chances. The Toyota Auris is still a very new car and we’re working our way through the development programme. We need to get to the bottom of this problem quickly. The championship is far from over, but it will be very difficult for us now and we will need an element of luck on our side”.

Mark Cronje and Robert Paisley, winners of the 2008 Volkswagen Rally fought a rearguard action all weekend after going off the road in stage three, damaging the radiator.

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Cronje - “A ‘left three into right six’ instruction caught me out. We hit the side of a dugout and jumped over a heap of earth which damaged the left front side of the car which pushed the radiator back and punctured it”.

Cronje filled the radiator with bottled water before stage four before returning to service where the team set about replacing the radiator. In all, seven minutes of lateness was incurred and a one minute ten second penalty was added to the distraught driver’s time, pushing the Castrol Auris pair to 8th overall on Friday night’s score sheets.

A shock absorber broke in stage seven which had to be carried into stage eight. A control arm broke in stage nine before Cronje fought back to win the final gravel stage and move up into 6th place.

Privateer team Mohammed Moosa/Grant Martin lost three minutes with a puncture in stage 9, bringing their Total Toyota Auris home second in class, well ahead of the A6 champion Craig Trott/Robbie Coetzee (Total RunX).

The next outing for the Castrol Toyota team is the Osram Rally on 22 August.

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