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POULTER AIMS FOR STRONG
FINISH IN OSRAM RALLY
Story: Staff Writer
Picture: Unlicensed
The sixth round of the Sasol South
African Rally Championship, the oneday
Osram Rally in the Southern
Drakensberg around Barkly East
presents something of a dilemma for
the Class A6 Imperial Toyota RunX pair
Leeroy Poulter and Henry Dearlove –
neither driver nor co-driver have any
experience of the high speed stages they
will encounter.
Dearlove, in spite of 14 years in
the left hand seat of rally cars and two
championships, has never run the stages
formerly known as the Mountain Trial. “I
ran the Dewetsdorp-based Osram Rally,
but I’ve never run in the mountains so
I’m looking forward to it, in spite of the
scary stories people tell me about the
event.”
The Imperial Toyota pair
has a nine point lead in the Class A6
Championship but their main target is
the inaugural 1600cc Championship,
where they are two points behind Ashley
Haigh Smith (Toyota Yaris), who scores
points at a 1.2 factor to equalize engine
size. Haigh-Smith still has to drop
his worst score, leaving Poulter and
Dearlove with a nett 14 point lead at this
stage of the season.
For Poulter, it is again virgin
territory, something he has easily
adapted to this year. “Every rally is new
for me so this one is nothing special.
I won’t have the benefi t of Henry’s
experience here, so we’ll take it easy
in the fi rst two stages to fi gure out
what the road conditions are like before
stepping up a gear or two”, said the
production car racer, enjoying a highly
successful debut season in rallying.
“The trick will be to stay as
close to Tjaart Conradie as possible if
we are behind him but our strategy will
be to go as fast as possible and stay on
the road and listen to my navigator very
carefully!”, Poulter added.
For Dearlove there is some
extra pressure. “Usually I have notes
from the previous years which I can
fi ne-tune, but I’m starting from scratch
this time, so I’ll pay more attention
to what Leon Botha has to say. The
Heuningneskloof stage is one I’ve been
warned about – there’s a section with
really big drops but otherwise it’s a fast
and fl owing route that again should suit
Leeroy’s precise driving style”.
As a pure power rally, Race Prep
Team Principle Rod Hering has realistic
expectations. “I don’t see Leeroy and
Henry fi nishing much higher than
around 13th or 14th overall assuming
everyone stays on the road. While it’s
great to be the fi rst two-wheel drive car
home, we have our sights on the two
championships so there won’t be any
heroics from inside the car. We are able
to tweak the ride height a bit because
the roads are usually quite smooth and I
hope there will be a lot of cars between
us and Ashley”.
The ultra-fast Osram Rally
starts from the Barkly East Golf Club
at 7am and takes in eight stages,
where Class A6 speeds average around
135km/h and often hit terminal speeds
of 170-180km/h.