The BP Volkswagen rally team were on top form in the 2nd leg of the SA Rally championships held in and around Caledon.

With temperatures soaring into the top 30's, defending national champions Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries claimed first place with teammates Jan Habig and Douglas Judd racing home just behind them.

Fekken and Arries notched up four stage victories to ensure victory in their BP Ultimate-powered S2000 Volkswagen Polo. The duo set the pace right from the start, posting a fastest time in the first stage of 14:36, finishing four seconds ahead of their nearest rivals – the Toyota Auris of Johnny Gemmell and Peter Marsh who eventually finished in third place.

Of the nine stages a BP Volkswagen S2000 Polo claimed the fastest time in eight of these – of which stage four, saw both the entries of Jan Habig and navigator Douglas Judd as well as Enzo Kuun and his navigator Guy Hodgson posting an identical times.

"The battle with Hergen and Pierre went right down to the wire,” says Habig. “We had a good weekend and a really good race to the end. There was only one worrying moment when we had a long, long jump, but otherwise it was a good run.”

While perhaps not a spectacular outing, Kuun and Hodgson’s conservative event saw them score a fifth place finish overall and some valuable rally points after a spectacular, but short-lived, outing in Kwa-Zulu Natal last month.

What the results of the day do not fully show is that Fekken and Arries were one second behind Habig and Judd at the end of stage 8. Then in stage 9 the positions reversed with Fekken and Arries posting a time of 13:30 and Habig and Judd recording 13:38. This gave the defending champions the slim lead they needed to claim their first victory of the season – in round two of the 2009 championship.

“We got everything exactly right in the last stage, especially the corners. We hit every apex perfectly” says Fekken. “The car went well and even though the stage was very rough, it was also very fast. We hit everything flat out, it was a great event.”

In class A5, BP Volkswagen Citi Golf of Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin claimed the class win for the event, with their teammates André Cleenwerck and Des de Fortier finishing in second place.

“This is the closest battle since I started rallying,” says Zulu. “It was so close, there was just one or two seconds between stages. In the first stage of this event the car a bit loose, it wasn’t setup quite right for the conditions, we changed that and from stage two tightened things and up took time back.”

In the final stage of the event, Zulu and Peskin broke a shock absorber and had to keep things very tidy to make the finish line.

Visuals courtesy of Motorpics.