Team PIRTEK’s du Plessis and Snyman enjoy season’s best finish
July 26, 2010 by ProMotor
The weekend of Friday and Saturday 23 and 24 July saw the running of the 28th Volkswagen Rally hosted by the Algoa Rally Association in Port Elizabeth. 42 of South Africa’s top teams fell under starter’s orders for the fifth round of the SASOL South African National Rally Championship.
The high levels of experience and competition within rallying in South Africa is very evident, after 164 km of racing action over some of the most infamous fast and flowing stages of the Longmore Forests, only a narrow 1.5 seconds separated 1st and 2nd place on the finish line podium.
Team PIRTEK enjoyed a commanding position at Friday’s overnight stop with Heinrich Lategan and Johan van der Merwe in 3rd with their team mates Visser du Plessis and Gerhard Snyman backing them up in 9th position overall.
The day two race strategy of the highly motivated, Lategan and van der Merwe was to consolidate his 3rd position; sadly realising this was easier said than done. On stage 8 hitting an embankment caused extensive damage to the left front of their Toyota Auris S2000. The damage was terminal and their retirement immediate. Lategan added, “Getting the balance right between challenging the front runners and at the same time keeping the gate closed to those behind is a very fine line. I know that we have the pace and ability, I just need to carry that momentum through to the finish line”
Du Plessis and Snyman enjoyed their first clean event since stepping up into class S2000 at the beginning of the season. With du Plessis finally adding, “I needed to have an incident free event from a mechanical and driving point of view; our objective was to be within 1 and ½ second a kilometre on day one and on day 2 respectively of the front runners. Gerhard and I achieved this and gained valuable seat time”
Partnering this success with the likes of SASOL and being able to call on their expertise and superior quality racing lubricants has put Team PIRTEK in a confident mood, and the team looks forward to continuing in their quest to win the Privateers Challenge and mix it up with the works teams during the remainder of the season.
The next outing for Team PIRTEK will be the Osram Rally taking place in the area around Barkley East on 21 August 2010.
Loading ...
Comments
Feel free to leave a comment...