Eastern Cape Rally Championship 2012 Round 2

Last weekend I took a drive out to the tiny town of Loerie, EC to go checkout the 2nd round of the EC Rally champs organised by the Algoa Rally Club. The event took place just two short weeks before the popular national VW Rally on 13-14 July 2012.

The Parc Ferme for the day was at JC’s Pub in Loerie, which hosted the service park as well. It was an early morning start of 8AM, with the intention of finishing off with plenty of time for everyone to make it back to PE for the rugby.

The rally had a smallish turnout of 10 vehicles, but some tough routes lead to the retirement of 4 of the vehicles by the end of the 10th stage.

The first 2 stages were tar stages run on the van Stadens pass. These were run twice each before moving onto the 3 dirt stages on the farm roads around Loerie, which were also run twice. I was fortunate enough to grab a ride with one of the organiser to different points on the stages to get some photos.

Once again I unfortunately don’t have the final results, but I’ve been told there are plans to get the club’s website back up to date. Although I didn’t get many great shots, it was still a nice day, and the lack of rain during the event was a nice change from the previous rallies I’ve attended. That being said there was still a fair amount of standing water from the previous weeks rains, which surely had an impact on the retirements.

I’m a bit sad that I’m not going to be around for the VW Rally in two weeks time, as this draws a far larger field, including some of the Polos and Runxs that compete on a national level. The rally will also be included as rounds 3 and 4 of the EC championship. More info on the VW Rally 2012 can be found here.

You can see a full gallery of the photos here.

Eastern Cape Rally Champs 2012

After having my first taste of rally spectating last year in the Cape, I was quite looking forward to attending some events this year. Finding myself in the Eastern Cape I checked on a local rally site (Rally World) for any information. Finding out there was a local regional championship I tried to find some information. The Algoa Rally Club has a website, but it hasn’t been updated since last year, but managed to get a contact person from Rally World.

So after acquiring info relating to the first round of the Eastern Cape Rally Championship I set off on Saturday morning for Hunter’s Retreat Hotel, the parc ferme for the day. Originally the rally was supposed to be based around the PE stadium and linked to the Great Outdoor Expo that was held there this weekend, but this fell through.

The rally comprised of eight stages. Two dirt stages being held near the PE Oval Track on Mission Road, and six tar stages held near Bridgemead and Parson’s Green. 11 drivers entered the rally.

The day got off to a miserable start, with high rainfall postponing the start of the rally. The dirt stages got off at about 11:30 eventually where I managed to catch some of the action. Unfortunately due to the delay and a prior engagement I wasn’t able to view any of the tar stages, and also can’t report on any of the results.

In any case, I took some photos, a selection of which can be seen here. I haven’t had a chance to do much editing, and didn’t get a chance to take as many photos as I would have liked, but look forward to the next event.

Blue Crane Benefit Rally 2011

I’ve always been a rally fan, pro rally driver would be my dream job, but I don’t see that happening any time soon. In any case I’ve often seen local rally events on TV but never known anything about them, their organisation or just how one goes about spectating one.

Earlier this year I finallygot round to doing some searching and discovered rallyworld.net, a website dedicated to keeping track of the local rally scene. I had made note of some of the events happening this year, but nothing really managed to fit in with my schedule. Until a couple recently when I saw a rally coming up this weekend, and it was in Caledon!

So I drove through to Caledon this morning, camera in hand and not really sure what to expect. The organising centre was at the Caledon Spa & Casino. Pitched up there and was quite happy to see some vehicles parked outside that fitted the bill, got myself a spectators guide and set in for some spectating.

I was mildly surprised at how many spectators there were, at the one point there were easily 100 people, not sure how many of them were friends/family of drivers, but still itneresting. I think this event was fairly small, with 20 vehicles participating. It seems like quite a regulars’ club, but I still enjoyed myself and I’m definitely going to keep my eyes open for another event.

I think it was top gear that made a comment about rally spectators going to different parts of the country and standing in the rain to watch a car go by for a few minutes

I took a bunch of photos which I will sort through tomorrow and put some up here (Edit: done, see below). Cars at the event included VW Citi Golfs, Subaru Imprezas, old BMW 3 series, VW Polos and a several other single entry cars.

I was at spectator points for stages 2, 4 and 6, before I decided to head off to Hermanus.

I’m not a big fan of WordPress’ photo gallery, so you can see more photos here.