The challenge of contesting the home event falls to the BP Volkswagen Rally Team this Friday and Saturday (13 to 14 July). The five-car team will contest three classes over the two days of competition to wow their Eastern Cape fans.
Round four of the season sees Hans Weijs Jnr and Björn Degandt in fifth place overall with their BP Volkswagen Polo S2000. The pair are the newest members of the BP Volkswagen team and this will be their first event in the Eastern Cape.
“This is our first opportunity to show off the new BP Volkswagen Polo S2000 on home ground,” says Mike Rowe, head of Volkswagen Motorsport. “The team has been working hard this year on the new BP Volkswagen Polo S2000 rally cars. This will be just the fourth time the cars are run in competition, but we’ve already got a great deal of work done.
“We’re just as excited for the Volkswagen Rally as the fans. We can’t wait to get into competition on home turf and show what the new BP Volkswagen Polo S2000 rally cars can do.”
Motorsport fans will be able to see their BP Volkswagen favourites in action. Here Enzo Kuun and Guy Hodgson and their teammates Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries will step to the fore. This quartet of drivers and navigators are regulars on the national rally circuit and have been providing action-packed spectating for years. The 2012 event should be no different as they tackle the 12 stages of the Volkswagen Rally which starts at Auto Pavilion on Friday and finishes at Kings Beach on Saturday afternoon.
For Gugu Zulu and Carl Peskin the Volkswagen Rally will be their first in the new BP Volkswagen Polo Vivo S2000 in the S2000 Challenge class. Zulu and Peskin have put on a commanding performance this year and, if their trend continues, local fans are in for a treat. The pair have a commanding lead in the class and will be tough to catch – but this is unlikely to see them taking it easy as slow is not in their vocabulary.
The S1600 class will see BP Volkswagen’s Megan Verlaque and Hilton Auffray racing for honours on Friday and Saturday. The pair contest the national championship in a two-wheel drive BP Volkswagen Polo Vivo and have proved themselves very quick out on the stages.
They are aiming for a strong performance in the Eastern Cape and the fast stages the event offers could play to their strengths at the Volkswagen Rally.
Rally fans can meet the BP Volkswagen Rally Team on Friday at Auto Pavilion before the event. The field will make the ceremonial start from this venue at 12:00 before heading to the first stage.
The finale takes place on Saturday afternoon at Kings Beach where a host of activities have been planned to create a great deal of entertainment for motorsport fans as they wait for the national rally field to arrive at 14:27.
