Manitou Group VW Polo R2 diary:
Tour Natal 2014
In the first of a series of updates, PoloDriver.com will be following the fortunes of the Polo R2 rally car run by Manitou Group in the 2014 South African National Rally Championship.
Here, Henry Kohne, co-driver of Paulus Franken, tells the story of the team’s first outing of the season, the Tour Natal 2014
On the weekend of 14-15 March 2014, the South African (SA) National Rally Championship kicked off in Natal, and unfortunately our season didn’t start as we hoped. After putting in long hours and hard work into both the car and team during the pre-season, we were positive to have a good event in Natal.
We picked up technical issues as early as the first stage of the event, and were forced to retire from day one.
We were able to restart the event on Saturday morning, under Super Rally rules and had a trouble free run on day two, posting consistent top three times in class. Although we did not manage to score an good overall position at the end of the event, we were running a good pace on day two, proving that the work we put in during the off-season was worth it.
We are looking forward to the next event, which is the SASOL Rally on the 11-12 April 2014. The SASOL Rally is usually one of the benchmark events in SA rallying.
We would like to thank our sponsors Manitou Group, Volkswagen Motorsport, and SasolRacing for their support.
