This past weekend saw no less than 31 of South Africa’s top national rally teams descend on the Overberg town of Caledon. From the start, the atmosphere was electric; the pace was going to be blisteringly fast and the margin for error - zero. The Western Cape Toyota Dealer Rally was second of eight events on the SASOL South African National Rally Championship calendar, with battle being done over 11 gravel stages ranging in length from 1.3 km right up to 22 km long.

Team PIRTEK knew that they had to build on their promising, but ultimately unlucky, start to the season at the Tour Natal Rally. Driver’s Heinrich Lategan and Visser du Plessis were ready and felt confident that the preparation efforts put into the team’s two Toyota Auris S2000s would pay dividends. Heinrich Lategan and navigator Johan van der Merwe immediately stepped up to the plate and set about achieving stage times on day one that placed them consistently amongst the front running factory works teams and put them in sixth position overnight.

Lategan added, “In Natal we were about a second a kilometre off the pace, this rally has seen that deficit reduced to within a quarter of a second per kilometre, despite some technical and mechanical challenges on the rally, our testing and development program is definitely achieving the desired results and moving us in the right direction.” PIRTEK teammates Visser du Plessis and his navigator Gerhard Snyman took a more cautious approach to the rally as du Plessis has had no real seat or proper testing time this year yet, and most of the important suspension type setup was simply cloned straight from Lategan’s car.

One can further understand du Plessis’ cautious approach when he states, “I still need to get to grips with the handling characteristics of the live wire S2000 that revs to 8 500 rpm, it is just so different to my previous turbocharged N4 car that stopped pulling after 5 200 rpm.” With Lategan and van der Merwe keeping a clean sheet on day two, this ensured that they stayed and finished amongst the factory cars in a credible fifth position overall. With braking mistakes and overshoots ultimately costing du Plessis and Snyman, they too finished in a commendable position by coming in tenth.

The scoring of hard earned points has began for Team PIRTEK and they are looking forward to taking the challenge to the current class leading Ford Fiesta and Volkswagen Polos at the SASOL Rally, taking place in the Sabie, White River and Nelspruit area of Mpumalanga on 23 and 24 April 2010.