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The Mpumalanga finale lived up to its tough reputation. The area hasn’t seen rain in ages, and the roads were packed hard with lots of large rocks just waiting to break a car.
With no run-off to speak of along the tree lined, narrow, roads, the situation was made worse by thick hanging dust in the dark forest stages synonymous with the TRAC N4 Dullstroom National Rally.
Johan Strauss and Caro Storm set the early pace in their Subaru Impreza on the Friday. And they were being chased hard by young newcomers, Dawie van der Merwe and Matt Kohler in their VW Polo GTI.
Our main competitors in the class, the Swatton brothers, Bruce Swatton and Craig Reyneke, and Lynton Swatton and Tommy Coetzee in their VW Polo GTIs, were swapping third and fourth place the whole time.
Our big plan was to hang in there and see what the Saturday would bring. But in rally, it’s never over till it’s’ over.
It was the last stage of Friday. We were just four kilometres from the end of a long and hot day. And we hit a dip, jump, dip combo faster than we should have.
We landed hard on the nose of the car. And at first, we thought it would be more cosmetic body work damage. But it immediately became clear that we had bigger problems.
We had lost all power. And we were about to become stranded on stage. My heart sank. We were going to be out the TRAC N4 Dullstroom National Rally.
After some choice words, deft clutch work, and pure desperation, we manged to get the car out the soft sand and at least rolling forward.
We crawled out the stage and made the long journey to the service park. We had lost a ton of time. But at least we were still in the rally.
What we didn’t know was that the damage to the car was more severe than we thought. The impact has damaged the car’s radiator, intercooler, brackets, and piping, as well as squashing the exhaust flat.
This meant the TGRSA’s mechanics would be working through the night to replace the damaged components to get the car ready for Saturday.
And they did, but it all changed on Saturday. First Strauss retired, followed shortly thereafter by van der Merwe. Both with mechanical issues.
Then unfortunately, Bruce Swatton rolled his car heavily, and this put a stop to the stage while medical personnel attended to him.
These retirements promoted Lynton Swatton up to first in class, with us now in second. Unless he too suffered some sort of problem, we weren’t catching him on pace.
We were all a bit rattled. And a decision was made to back it off and kept it neat and tidy and bring the car home. We had nothing to gain and everything to lose.
By doing this, we managed to pick valuable points at the TRAC N4 Dullstroom National Rally and finish out 2026 National Rally Championship season second in the NRC2 drivers’ championship on 118 points.
11 points behind champion Bruce Swatton on 129, and eight points clear of third-placed Lynton Swatton on 110.
It really was a good season for our team. Although it was always about development, and doing the mileage, scoring points and getting on the podium was a huge bonus.
You can take one look at our TGRSA GR Yaris to see that it has come a long way from a road car with a roll cage, to where it is now, it’s a proper rally car.
The great news is that we can announce that our team will be back in 2027, and that we should be joined by a few more Toyota works GR Yaris’.
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