Top five finish for Volkswagen Sasolracing’s Hans Weijs Jnr and Björn Degandt
Hans Weijs Jnr and Björn Degandt rallied their Volkswagen Sasolracing Polo S2000 to fifth place overall at the Toyota Dealer Cape Rally on Saturday.
The duo worked hard to overcome a stage one incident that saw them hit a pole. This cost them nearly a minute to the leaders and they needed to push the pace for the remainder of the event to close that gap – winning stage 10 in the process.
“We made a few changes in the setup for this rally,” says Hans. “The event has changed since I first competed here two years ago and the changes did not work for us – that cost us time as well out on the stages. A top five finish is good, but not nearly good enough for us, this rally was just not my rally this year.”
Conditions on the Western Cape event varied between wet and muddy on Friday to hot and dry on Saturday, further keeping the teams on their toes, with mostly tar stages taking place on the first day with day two an all-gravel affair.
“We had a really good car on this rally,” says Gugu Zulu. “We worked hard for a good result at this event and I was really happy with our pace. On Saturday morning we were pushing hard, but were slightly off-line over a series of jumps and we damaged our rear suspension in stage six. Unfortunately that ended our rally right there.”
Zulu and Carl Peskin finished day one in fifth place overall for the day, less than a minute behind the rally leaders. According to Zulu the Volkswagen Sasolracing Polo S2000 performed flawlessly during the first day on the event, creating the opportunity for them to push their pace during day one to run with the leaders.
Henk Lategan and Barry White ran consistently during the event, holding their ground against the opponents. Stage 11 saw them eliminated when they hit a pole.
“The rally was going quite well,” says Lategan who had to compete while still recovering from a broken hand. “Unfortunately in the second-last stage we hit a very slippery patch and by the time I could regain steering we were already too close to the pole to avoid it. That ended our rally right there.”
