The Petrefuel Algoa Rally Club Championship will see the final two rounds of their 2024 season taking place at the resurrected Amatola Rally that will be held in the forests of the Hogsback area this weekend and will see today’s round 6 being a night rally starting in the main street of the village at 8pm, with round 7 being a day rally that starts tomorrow at 8:30am. The night rally will be made up of 4 dirt stages through the forests totalling a distance of approximately 65 kilometres and Saturday’s day rally made up of 6 stages with a total distance of 95 kilometres.
Picture Credit: Dries Beetge
The rally headquarters will be at the Main Road Community Centre that is situated in the village of Hogsback and the cars will go off in three minute intervals to allow the dust to settle between them and the first cars are expected back at Parc Ferme next to the Rally headquarters at approximately 11:55pm and the last car at around 01:10am for tonight’s night rally.
The village of Hogsback has embraced the return of the Amatola Rally and many of the accommodation establishments are expecting to sell-out over the weekend. There is also an information centre that will be set up at race headquarters for spectators to get a detailed spectator guide of where to view the action from the many spectacular viewing areas.
Heading into the last two rounds of the drivers’ championship it is Neels Vosloo who has a slender 17 point lead of Deon Kretzmann with the ever consistent Francois Vermaak a further 19 points adrift and in the navigator’s championship it is Rikus Fourie that leads with Jason Schreiber 17 points behind him with Juane’ Viljoen in third place. There are already 23 confirmed entries with a couple more expected for the Saturday action as Algoa Rally Club have introduced a “Brille en Pille” class that caters for past rally heroes to enter and enjoy the Amatola event as it used to be a regular feature on the National Rally scene.
There are various National stars that will be taking part in the weekend’s event after bringing home a bagful of trophies and awards from the last round of the National Rally Championship that took place in the Dullstroom area on the 16th & 17th of November. East London based competitor Oliver de Man along with his navigator Ingrid Jeacocks in their debut national rally season won the SA NRC5 Championship for classic type cars as well as finished in third place overall in the two-wheel drive category , whilst local heroes Neels Vosloo and Rikus Fourie finished in second place overall in SA NRC 4 class for open, two wheel drive cars as well as finishing in second place overall in the two-wheel drive championship, whilst Fourie also finished on the podium in the navigators championship taking third place. For Jeffreys Bay resident Jeacocks is was a season of up & downs as she also navigated for Jonno van Wyk in the premier NRC1 class in their 4-wheel drive Toyota Starlet that battled with reliability issues at a couple of the events.
