Toyota Gazoo Racing's Lategan & Cummings Off to Perfect Start in SA Rally Raid Championship
- The opening round of the South African Rally-Raid Championship (SARRC) took place in Dullstroom this past weekend
- Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa fielded their GR DKR Hilux T1+, which, under the new regulations, is allowed to compete in 2022
- The GR DKR Hilux T1+ is the vehicle that was victorious at the 2022 Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia earlier this year
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The opening round of the 2022 South African Rally-Raid Championship (SARRC), the Mpumalanga 400, brought elation for two of Toyota Gazoo Racing SA’s four squads; frustration for one crew; and heartbreak for the final pairing. For defending champions, Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings, it was the perfect start to their 2022 campaign, as they sealed victory in the opening round by 48 seconds.
The crew reported no issues with their GR DKR Hilux T1+, which is identical to the car that won the Dakar Rally in the hands of Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel in January this year. Lategan/Cummings won the qualifying race on the Friday of the race weekend and managed to bring their trusty steed home in the first place, come Saturday afternoon.
Source: UGC
At the same time, teammates Shameer Variawa and Danie Stassen showed their true potential, by posting the third-fastest time during Friday’s qualifying race, before knuckling down to grind out a second-place overall by the time the final flag dropped, MotorPress reports. This was their best performance yet with the team, and they had every reason to be extremely pleased with their result.
The racing gods can be a fickle bunch, and for Giniel de Villiers and co-driver Dennis Murphy, the chips just wouldn’t fall the way they needed, SA Cross Country Racing reports. The pair were quick in qualifying, despite suffering a puncture seven kilometres from the finish of the qualifier. This placed them in sixth for the start, but they made the most from this position to fight for the lead of the race with their teammates, as well as Ford’s Lance Woolridge and co-driver Elvene Vonk.
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Source: UGC
A fierce battle saw Lategan/Cummings in a fight with De Villiers/Murphy and Woolridge/Vonk until the Ford pairing were forced to withdraw following a heavy impact with a tree. This allowed Variawa/Stassen to close on the leaders, while De Villiers/Murphy put in a blistering performance to take the outright lead of the race.
With the kilometres unwinding, victory seemed within grasp for De Villiers/Murphy, since Lategan/Cummings was forced to stop for some closed gates early on. But then the Dakar legend, who celebrated his 50th birthday at the Mpumalanga 400, fell foul to mud-hole scant kilometres from the finish of the race.
It took precious minutes to extricate the stricken Hilux from the mud-hole, with the crew eventually losing more than thirty minutes, and tumbling down the order to eighth place overall. Heartbreak after getting within five kilometres of winning the race, only to see it slipping away in the end.
Source: UGC
With victory in the opening round, Lategan/Cummings picked up where they left off in 2021. This time, however, they recorded the first-ever official win for a Class T1+ car, and will be heading to Round 2, the Sugarbelt 400 in KwaZulu-Natal, with their tails up.
The next round is set for the end of April 2022 and will offer De Villiers/Murphy a chance at redemption after the disappointment of their opening rounds.
Toyota Gazoo Racing SA to field Dakar winning Hilux in 2022 South African Rally Raid Championship
South Africa's motorsport fraternity is very proud of the work being done by Toyota, and the decision to field the Dakar-winning car at the Dullstroom 400 drew much attention, Briefly News reports.
For 2022, the series, formerly known as the South African Cross-Country Series (SACCS), has been rebranded in line with the FIA’s global naming strategy, will see no fewer than four factory-entered cars this season, with former rally champions, Guy Botterill and Simon Vacy-Lyle, joining the squad for the year.
With the truncated preparation period, the team has had to shoe-horn a lot of work into a short period of time. Despite this, they have also benefitted from a test conducted by Nasser Al-Attiyah and co-driver Mathieu Baumel during the recent Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, which focussed on the further development of the DKR Hilux T1+ suspension system.
Source: Briefly News
