BONUS - RUSTENBURG - With three rounds of the 2024 SA Rally-Raid Championship, that included the tough and testing TGRSA Safari 1000 marathon that recently took place in the Thabazimbi area of the Limpopo Province, now something of the past, new overall leaders have emerged. The standings in the overall as well as the class championships, set the perfect stage for a nail-biting second half of the season.
The recent Safari 1000 proved to be a real challenge and when the dust settled after three days and almost a thousand kilometres of racing, it was the race winners, Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings (TGRSA Toyota Hilux IMT EVO) who moved up from third place to the top step in the overall standings.
The former multiple champions could not complete the opening round of the season after an unfortunate incident, but fought back with a vengeance to claim two consecutive victories, which also heralded their first ‘desert race’ win. Lategan/Cummings have now earned 75 points towards the overall championship.
Their team-mates, Giniel de Villiers/Elvéne Vonk, who were the overall leaders after the first two rounds, dropped back to second place and trailed them by 16 points. The team produced a solid performance at the Safari 1000, until technical challenges in the final section of the race resulted in them finishing 14th overall.
Lance Woolridge/Kenny Gilbert (Neil Woolridge Motorsport NWM Ford Ranger T1+) made quite a significant jump in the overall standings with their move from eighth to third place, after their second-place finish at Thabazimbi. A mere seven points now separate them from De Villiers/Vonk. The Ford team are sandwiched between the Toyota Gazoo Racing teams with Guy Botterill/Dennis Murphy only one point behind in fourth place. The team lost time due to technical difficulties on the second day of the Safari 1000 that dropped them down the field.
Behind them, the Blignaut brothers, Fouché and Bertus (#TeamHilux Rally-Raid DKR Hilux T1+) are still fifth overall (45 points) followed by the second NWM Ford Ranger in the hands of the defending champions, Gareth Woolridge/Boyd Dreyer who made the biggest move on the overall points’ ladder by shooting up from 14th to sixth place (35 points). Although the team could not claim a second consecutive ‘desert race’ victory, they managed to finish fourth after having to fight back from lower down the field.
Johan de Bruyn/Adriaan Roets (Red-Lined REVO T1+) moved from tenth to ninth place (27 points) and kept their lead in the Adventurer Class followed by the runners-up in this class, the Heinlein duo, Gerhard and Rudi (Red-Lined Motorsport VK56 Evo2) who moved into the top 10 trailing the class leaders by one point.
In the Adventurer Class, De Bruyn/Roets are still leading (95 points), but only two points separate them from the Heinlein family who has moved into second place and the battle lines have been drawn. Behind them the standings between the drivers and navigators looks somewhat different, due to Botha making use of two different navigators. Botha is third in the Adventurer Drivers’ Championship (69 points), followed by Basson (60 points) and Johan van Staden (Renault Duster) on 58 points. The two German drivers, Daniel (55 points), and Jurgen Schröder (30 points) who have moved to the Ulimate Class, are sixth and seventh respectively.
Teams now have almost six weeks to prepare for the fourth and fifth rounds of the SARRC that takes place in the surrounds of the boutique destination, Parys on 16 and 17 August.
