Young Guns win six of 10 stages
The Young Guns reflected on the Rallystar Rally competition after yet another setback.
Local rally drivers, the Young Guns (Richard Leeke and Henry Köhne) were able to win only six of the 10 stages at the Rallystar Rally on 26 May. The duo suffered a string of technical issues on their Speedglas Welding Helmet Ford Fiesta during the race, which ended near Bela-Bela in the Limpopo province.
On Friday, 25 May, during the long stage, they suffered a puncture which was followed by more issues on Saturday’s back-to-back traverses of the 40 Turfpan stage. In the second run through Turfpan,they first had a puncture, followed by a suspected driveshaft failure, which cost them the best part of seven minutes, according to Roadworx communication, their PR Company.
“After we lost drive, it really was game over for us,” Richard lamented, clearly struggling to maintain his normally cheerful demeanour in the face of the setbacks.
“We had driven our hearts out and we knew that we were in a solid second spot in the S1600s, and able to take the fight to Guy [Botterill] and Simon [Vacy-Lyle],” he explained.
According to Roadworx, they lost a small amount of time on Stage 2, the 31,1km Dirk Daling, with a gearshift problem but were still a clear second overnight in the R2N class, the premier category in South African rallying. Saturday morning brought the promise of a real fight between the two crews, very obviously well-matched and some way ahead of the rest of the R2N competitors in terms of outright pace.
“We were really unlucky today – a driveshaft failure is an occupational hazard with a powerful front-wheel-drive car on gravel – if one breaks, you’re left with 1 000kW of power, but you just can’t do anything with it, because your car is essentially a one-wheel-drive! The Turfpan stages made up more than 50 per cent of the rally, so losing out so badly in one of them and less so in the other really sealed our fate. While it looks good in the statistics that we were fastest in six of the 10 racing sections, in two of the others we experienced problems, and in the remaining two, we were second to Guy and Simon,” Richard reflected.
Race partner Henry Köhne also weighed in, saying, “With the points updated, we’re now third in class and the next rally is the halfway point of the series. We need to find some reliability and get solid point hauls from here on in. But it isn’t over by a long chalk, and we have no intention of giving up any time soon.”
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