2011 South African National Rally Championship

[Mirek]

I also see that Schalk Burger Jnr, who was luck to survive his crash into the river last year, is now talking about driving a Prodrive Impreza in the African Rally Championship. Will be interesting to see if he does some SA events with it, besides the Sasol of course.

Sad news about Motorite, although the news said rallying, not necessarily off-road racing too.

Grant, what sort of figure did your RunX S2000 cost? I'm interested to see that a Peugeot 207 is about 400 000 Euros, which is about R4 million in our money, yet I remember an article in Car Magazine testing the Polo S2000 and saying it only cost R1.5 million. Just thinking that a local S2000 car is costing much less than the European versions.

207 S2000 Evo (latest model) cost 264 thousand Euro. Fabia is similar. Engine of Fabia is around 45 thousand Euro and gearbox is 22 thousand. I don't know prices of spare parts for Peugeot.

[Bruce D]

That still means nearly R3 million, so very expensive compared to our cars. Maybe thats why places like the British series struggle, they don't have the manufacturers making the cars cheap.

[Grant_RSA]

We are unfortunately running older generation cars, this could be at least 1 reason for the cost difference.

[Grant_RSA]

Now were up to 4 Fords with possibility of a 5th, this is almost getting out of hand :-D

[BruceD]

Quite a few interesting stories on Rallyworld.net this week. I'm particularly glad to hear the return of Jon Williams. I thought he was just coming right when he left for the Pirelli driver challenge thing and then disappeared. A good young talent there, should be interesting to see how he goes.

[Grant_RSA]

Looks like the rest is pretty much as per last year, with the exception of Elvene Coetzee joining Leeroy Poulter.

[Bruce D]

It's been confirmed that the BP VW team will now have 4 works cars, as Gineal de Villiers joins, partnered by Ralph Pitchford.

Also some calendar changes are happening but nothing seems to be confirmed yet so we'll see what happens.

[Bruce D]

Hmm, interesting rumour emerging this morning that Hein Lategan and Visser du Plessis in the Pirtek team may in fact have Peugeot 207 S2000 cars for the season! That should throw an interesting spanner into the works. This also means their 2 Auris S2000s become available.

[Bruce D]

Seems the rumour is true. Lategan will have a S2000 207 but it won't be ready for the first round. He may have to sit out that round.

Grant, what's your take on this new Citroen Cup? Citroen have confirmed they are supporting 4 R2 spec C2s for competitors in A6. Sounds like A6 is going to be even more competitive than we thought!

[Grant_RSA]

I heard mumblings about citroen late last year but assumed it had fallen by the way side, will be interesting to see who takes up the deal.. i do worry though that more imported cars are going to become to expensive in the long run, but time will tell, more competition in any class is always welcome.

I look forward to having the 207's here, all its doing is making our championships more world class.