2009 National Championships Round 5
Thursday, 22 October 2009 09:43
An historic victory for the Volkswagen Rally Team in Port Elizabeth.
This season the team not only won the event, but claimed all three podium positions in the process in their BP Ultimate S2000 Volkswagen Polos.
The defending national champions Hergen Fekken and navigator Pierre Arries were the only members of BP Volkswagen’s S2000 team that had not posted a Volkswagen Rally victory – until this year. The pair romped home to a convincing win – virtually a full minute ahead of their teammates Enzo Kuun and Guy Hodgson. Kuun and Hodgson had a rocky start to the season, not finishing the very first event this year.
This has not deterred them and they have posted progressively better results at each passing event. Their second place in the event not only helped their team to achieve a significant victory, but has also given their 2009 championship points standings a boost.
The third link in the chain for the BP Volkswagen team at this event was Jan Habig and Douglas Judd who filled the final podium position for the event. The team have threatened a one-two-three victory before, but events have conspired to prevent it from happening – until their home event.
“Stage 10 was good for us,” says Habig. “We wanted to see how much time we could make up and we didn’t know if they could fix Gemmell’s problem so every second counted.”
The dash to beat Gemmell was complicated by an intermittent miss on the Toyota Auris. The Volkswagen team could not be certain if their opposition had actually repaired the fault and had to compete as though the competition was running at full capacity.
“We’re very happy with the result,” says Fekken. “It was a good win and put us on a good footing for the rest of the season.”
For Fekken and Arries the event could have turned out very differently – they picked up a log somewhere on stage nine and this lodged in their engine compartment. Incredibly it caused no damage and their performance was unaffected in the event.
Down in the A5 class, Gugu Zulu and navigator Carl Peskin did not have a great deal of fortune in their BP Volkswagen Citi Golf. The duo had a good start to the event but on the third stage a sudden drop in oil pressure forced their retirement.
André Cleenwerck and Des de Fortier, did not suffer any problems in their BP Ultimate-powered Citi Golf and powered their way through to a class win by the end of day two.
“We’ve had plenty of trouble on this event in the past,” says Cleenwerck. “It feels good to finally finish the Volkswagen Rally – and do it with a class win.”
Visuals courtesy of Motorpics.
