Jan Habig Rallying

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That rally you want to forget

16 September 2013

"What can I say - we will record this event as possibly the one rally we want to forget," said former South African rally champion Jan Habig after the Toyota Dealer Rally in the Cape.

Habig, never a superstitious person, didn't even give Friday the 13th a second thought until a pre-event interview and he just laughed it off.

In the very first special stage on Friday morning, Habig and Paisley managed to literally "fly" their Basil Read Ford Fiesta over a ditch at very high speed.

"We were extremely lucky - some competitors weren't so lucky and a few of them were parked in the ditch on their front ends," said Habig. "I knew that if we tapped off ever so slightly we were going to get hurt, but once over the ditch and through the fence, we couldn't get back onto the rally route, and had to drive about a kilometre up alongside the fence to cross back onto the route, with a damaged radiator. We managed to scoop some water and make our way to the service park, but had to contend with a herd of free-roaming cows on the way. In the face of what we had just experienced, this was a minor, but an extremely dangerous situation for competitors who are driving at high speed."

Habig and the team of technicians got the Basil Read Ford Fiesta back into good running condition and ran under the Super Rally regulations on Saturday morning.

"The organisers had placed us just behind the other S2000 cars on the road, but unfortunately we had an incident where we overshot. I couldn't get the car into reverse, and travelled three kilometres up a road to turn around, travel three kilometres back, and lost two minutes in the process," said Habig with a grin. "That's where we found ourselves between the S1600s and caught the competitors in the stage, which just was the final blow."

The Basil Read Ford team used the remainder of the day to test various set-ups and eventually finished 16th overall, bagged a few points, and are still occupying second position overall in the 2013 SA Rally Championship for drivers and navigators.

"An expensive exercise to test a rally car, but that is just what it is, and now we look forward, remain focused and give it our best effort in Polokwane next month," said Habig.

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