With just one round of the national rally championship left, an explosive season finale awaits the BP Volkswagen rally team

The BP Volkswagen rally team saw Enzo Kuun and Guy Hodgson ascend to second place on the podium after two hard-fought days of rally action at the BP Ultimate Rally. The pair found themselves embroiled in a battle to the finish which placed them second by just 10.4 seconds.

The nine stage rally proved to be a tough event with 20 finishers after the two days of competition. Kuun and Hodgson, in their BP Ultimate-powered S2000 Polo, were flying the flag high for the BP Volkswagen team, crossing the line with two stage wins and enjoying a welcome return to form.

According to Kuun their Polo took a serious beating on the event and, during the second last stage, hit a rock that damaged a steering arm. The final stage took place on Killarney race circuit and Kuun and Hodgson were hard-pressed to keep up with the rest of the field but lost just 0.6 of a second here on the rally winners, Mark Cronje and Robert Paisley in their Toyota.

This is the third consecutive podium finish for the Kuun / Hodgson pairing that started off their season with a DNF (did not finish) and have clawed their way up to the top five at the penultimate round.

The second of the BP Volkswagen S2000 entries to cross the line was that of Jan Habig and Douglas Judd. Habig put in a consistent performance throughout the event to post a finishing position just off the podium. This result sees Habig and Judd currently in third place overall for the season.

For the championship leaders, Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries, the BP Ultimate Rally was a nightmare event right from the outset. They experienced various mishaps including a small roll and lost too much time to close
the gap afterwards.

The BP Ultimate Rally for Habig and Fekken also marks their 20th and 17th successfully completed event, proving once again the reliability of the BP Volkswagen S2000 Polo rally cars.

In class A5, it was the BP Ultimate-powered Volkswagen Citi Golf of Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin that claimed victory.

Even so, Zulu would have liked the event to have been a little easier.

“We started off really well,” says Zulu. “We gambled on wet weather tyres for the first stage – and that paid off. It gained us around 44 seconds. Later though, things started to go wrong when our car cut out whenever we hit water.

André Cleenwerck and Des de Fortier crossed the finish line in second place, four minutes ahead of their nearest rivals.

With just one round of the national rally championship left in Gauteng next month, there is an explosive finale waiting to close the season and find out who will be crowned the national rally champion in 2009. With a tie for first, it will be anybody’s guess until the cars storm across the finish line.