The BP Volkswagen team claimed the Manufacturer’s title at the 2009 Sasol Rally with all three S2000 BP Volkswagen Polos finishing in the top five of the event.

A second, fourth and fifth place in this rally, the third national rally, secured the title for the dominating team.

Defending champions Hergen Fekken and navigator Pierre Arries were beaten into second place in this event by just four seconds from the winning Toyota crew of Johnny Gemmell and Robert Paisley. The layout of the event suited the Auris better than the BP Ultimate-powered Polo and the team chewed precious seconds away from Fekken and Arries’ hard-fought lead of day one.

Nine seconds was the biggest gap on any one stage between the leading pair and six of the 14 stages saw the BP Ultimate Polo of Fekken and Arries the fastest entry in the field.

“The pace of the modern rally is intense,” says Arries, navigator to Fekken. “One wrong move, a puncture, spin, whatever and you have lost it.”

The battle raged right to the finish line with rally aficionados unwilling to commit to either one emerging victorious. For Enzo Kuun and Douglas Judd the fourth place finish brings some welcome points and they will up their pace again to move a little higher on the standings in round four.

The team’s service technicians swapped out the exhaust system on their rally car after a leak was detected in the manifold. With that done, it was business as usual for the duo. While they claimed just two stage victories at this event, the important focus had to be on finishing well and avoiding drama to keep them in the championship.

For Jan Habig and Douglas Judd, the rocks littering the stages on the first day proved to be their undoing. A puncture – which saw the wheel reduced to two sidewalls and no running surface whatsoever – cost them precious minutes and they were forced to work hard to fight their way back to a fifth place finish.

For Habig and Judd to finish just three minutes and 25 seconds off the winning team after two days of short sprints over rough terrain is testament to just how hard they worked to get their Polo back to the front of the field.

In class A5, the Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin pairing were well on track for a good performance. Some serious work on their part saw them showing a clean pair of heels to the competition. Disaster struck for the duo when, having completed just two kilometres of stage eight, their BP Ultimate-powered Volkswagen Citi Golf started losing power culminating, just seconds later, in a blown motor.

Of the seven completed stages, Zulu and Peskin posted three of the fastest stage times for the A5 class. With Zulu out of contention it was then up to André Cleenwerck and Des de Fortier to fly the team’s flag to victory.

Cleenwerck and De Fortier were at the top of their game with eight stage wins by the time they completed stage 12. Despite a puncture on day one, they were well in the lead by this point – leaving their competition in the dust by minutes. Unfortunately their performance did not yield expected results. Instead of a class win in this event, the pair was eliminated by a suspected dropped valve on the second-last stage and they were unable to finish.

While this performance by the BP Volkswagen team will not rate as one of their most stellar of late, the team’s championship chances are still alive and the fight will continue as the season heads for the mid-point at the next round.

Visuals courtesy of Motorpics.