Veterans scoop blind rally win
2010-08-31 08:51
The Vintage and Veteran Club’s Nico Kleyn and Pieter van Niekerk scored their third successive win in the Total Blind Navigators’ Rally Championship last weekend.
They used their Volkswagen Touran to complete the one-day event, round five of the seven-event series, finishing with just 163 seconds penalties, 276 seconds ahead of the second-place team.
Ernst Mee and Susan Bam of the Blind Navigators Rally Club in a VW Golf VR6, came second. Third, and just two seconds behind Mee and Bam, were the BNRC’s Gerhard Korf and Susan Webber in a Toyota Conquest.
Nineteen crews started the 250-km event from the Pretoria Motor Club on Sunday morning. However the BNRC combination of Jerry Paice and Bonita Blankenberg in a 1984 Alfa Romeo Guilietta, were forced to retire because of an overheating problem.
Jessica Green, reading the Braille route notes for Patrick Mills in a Toyota Corolla, made it three BNRC lady navigators in the top four. Julie Vernon was the highest-placed lady driver in sixth place with husband Robert in a Toyota Avanza, just 15 seconds behind fifth-placed Hennie van Rensburg and Wessel Groenewald in a Volkswagen Caddy.
The BNRC’s all-lady crew of Karin Makkink and Wilna du Toit (Ford Ranger) was seventh with the rest of the top 10 being made up of fellow club members Greg Turner and Koos MacDonald (Lotus 7), Amanda Cordani and Tommy Lehmkhul (Toyota Corolla) and Petrus Visser and Linda Mentoor (Mazda3).
The event is part of a unique series that enables unsighted motor sport enthusiasts to compete in a form of rallying that relies less on speed and more on accurate route finding and timing. It ran in conjunction with round seven of the South African Regularity Rally Association’s Firestone Legendary Drives championship.
Total South Africa has been associated with blind navigators’ rallies for many years and has been sponsoring the series organised by SARRA for several years. “It is an important part of our corporate social investment programme,” said Ms Nadia Vosloo, Total South Africa’s brand and communications manager.
The next round of the Total Blind Navigators Rally Championship is the Rallye Sport Regularity Rally on October 24.
