The past twelve months have presented every single one of us with moments of trepidation, awe, despair, hope and gratitude. The adjustments required will, however, I believe, enrich our lives and educate us on so many levels.
Ticky Martyn and Jaco Vorster.
Ticky Martyn has been an avid Moto X and enduro rider from 1982 until 2020. He did Barberspan, the Roof and many national events. He is also a MSA-qualified Clerk of the Course. In 2017 he was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. This experience and recovery that followed only allowed for some social riding, but, said Martyn, “It is time to move on and four wheels (rallying) is the next step. The whole cancer experience forced me to reconsider many things: the value of one’s faith, family, friends and experiences – the irrelevance of material things. I decided to make that bucket list. “Rallying has always been a dream of mine since the 1990s when the Sasol Rally started here in our nick of the woods. Now, the intention is for me and Jaco Vorster to be the national champions in the R2N class within four years. This year will be about learning the car and for me and Jaco to gel as a team. “The car we bought from Guy Botterill. It is a 1.6-litre (115kW on the wheels) Etios – fully prepared, race-specced and kitted with the best technology available. Guy and his team will, at the various races, also render service support and advice where it is required. Consistency is our goal and we are confident that we will reach these with little or no damage to the car. I have done advanced driving courses over the years, but the biggest adjustment for me will to ace the braking points. On bikes, I have always been late on the brakes, but of course, with cars, it is different.” Jaco Vorster will be navigating. Although he has ridden bikes since he can remember, it was only after finishing school that the interest became more focused, but still very much for leisure. A couple of enduros and some Farm Jam events followed, navigating for some national rally drivers, and now he is part and parcel of this new rally team. “I have done some navigating for Danie Stassen and Richard Fuller,” said Jaco. “Danie is an exceptional teacher because he can drive as well as navigate, and he really taught me everything I know. I have adapted our pace notes for the first race, which was in Bronkhorstspruit earlier this month, to ensure that Ticky does not ‘overstep’ the brake points. We will apply this methodology until we are comfortable with each other’s instructions and tone of voice during instruction before we really start pushing the envelope. The tone of instruction is often as much of instruction as is the instruction itself.” The team’s first race in Bronkhorstspruit and the first leg in the Womza Rally Championship Series is done and dusted and they won their class. “Our bonnet flew open in stage 2 (quite scary) and we hit a rock in stage 4 which broke four nuts on the gearbox mounting. We only realised this at the service park, though. In the last stage, we were 22 seconds behind the first car and despite Jaco’s suggestion that we just finish the race, I decided to push, and we finished one minute 47 seconds ahead of the second team in our class. Overall, we are extremely chuffed with our first rally and we are set on refining a couple of things before we tackle our next rally,” said Ticky.
In action. Photo by Jan Viljoen.
“Thank you to everyone – our service crew in particular – for the unwavering support on our new rally venture,” he concluded
