Sasol’s Racing Rally Team, backed by a pair of M-Sport-built Fiesta S2000’s dominated Rally South Africa, the 5th round of the South African National Rally Championship, this past weekend.

 

Leading the event from start to finish, Sasol’s Rally team, Mark Cronje and Robin Houghton won six of the nine stages to take a comfortable 24.5 second win.

 

Their third victory in five events put them back in the lead of the championship table, one point ahead of their season-long factory-backed rivals with three rounds remaining.

 

Cronje and Houghton’s team mates, Jon Williams and Cobus Vrey, in the second Sasol Racing machine ended in a frustrated 13th overall after losing 10 minutes in a bizarre incident on day two.

 

The winning Sasol Racing pair set the second fastest time in the qualifying stage – a system used by the World Rally Championship to determine road position - and elected to run 7th on the road. With the advantage of cleaner roads swept clear of loose surface gravel and powered by Sasol Turbo Fuels and Techno Oil, Cronje and Houghton blitzed their nearest rivals by 11.8 seconds and went into an immediate lead, ending the first day 13.6 seconds clear of the chasing pack.

 

Day two saw the teams tackle four gravel forest stages where one team consistently topped the timesheets; Sasol Racing’s Cronje and Houghton, sweeping all before them barring the final gravel speed test.

 

“We put a lot of effort into our preparation and it paid off. The first day was extremely technical and you had to be on the notes all the time which we were. It was easy to make a mistake; the stages were a good challenge but it was a tough time in the ‘office’,” Cronje said.

 

Sasol Oil’s MD, Alan Cameron is elated with the team’s performance, “We’re proud to enable a high performance rally team. Not only do they exemplify peak racing performance, they provide the ideal platform for us to continuously improve our products through rigorous testing and analysis,” he added.

 

The next outing for the Sasol Racing Rally Team is the Toyota Dealer Cape Rally on 13 -15 September in the Overberg region of the Western Cape.

 

ENDS

 

For more information on Sasol Racing contact:

 

Mark Pym

Mobile +27 (0) 82 328 3391 

 

Sasol’s Racing Rally Team strikes gold