Sasol Rally

The third round of the 2010 Sasol South African National Rally Championship runs on April 23/24. The event starts from Sabie, to the west of the Kruger National Park. After an opening loop of stages, the cars return to Sabie for a rest halt before heading south for Friday evening’s competition. The overnight halt is in Nelspruit. Section three of the event gets underway at 0705 on Staurday morning with a lunchtime rest halt back in Sabie before the final loop and a 1600 finish at the Lowveld Showgrounds in Nelspruit. The route is 580 kilometers long, of which 161 kilometers will be competitive no a mixture of asphalt ad gravel stages. There are 15 stages split between four sections over the two days.

Again, this is an event I don’t know too much about. What I do know is that it’s more of a forest rally, it’s in the trees on some good roads. I’m looking forward to this kind of event. The second round – the Toyota Dealer Rally – was so fast, it was amazing.

It was great fun to be averaging 140kph on some of the stages, but at the same time there were a lot of flat-out stretches into a junction and then onto another flat-out section; that kind of stage doesn’t really flow in the same way I think the next event will.

The good news is that we go to round three joint second in the championship and on the back of our first win of the season – and we’ll have had time to test the car and work on finding the optimal set-up.