The 2012 South African rally championship is one of the most anticipated in years and Pieter Kotze has the inside story.
With the fiery 2011 champion, Zimbabwean-based Conrad Rautenbach, hanging up his gloves to focus on the 2013 Dakar, the factory VW and Toyota teams will once again battle it out with privately entered Ford Fiesta’s and Peugeot 207’s for top honours. The SA championship is one of the toughest national series in the world with up to 20 cars competing in the S2000 class, and podium positions usually decided by a few fractions of a second. Another big upset is that six times national champion, Jannie Habig will be leaving the VW team, but he`s also promised he won`t be ducking out of the sport altogether. Rally fans can’t wait to see what this legend of SA rallying will turn up with. It’s also unsure whether South Africa’s Dakar star, Giniel de Villiers, will be back in the VW Polo now that he’s racing for Toyota in off-road events. What we can be sure of is that the 2012 season will be full of fireworks, lots of dust and lots of action. The sugarcane fields of Kwazulu-Natal can’t wait to greet competitors on the 23rd of March… Watch Charl Wilken throw his Fiesta S2000 around as Pieter Kotze tries to hang on in the navigator’s seat in the video below.
