NamibiaSport

Namibian rally enthusiasts can look forward to a feast of rally entertainment and excitement when the popular Total Tara Rally takes place on November 13 to 15.

At a press conference on Wednesday evening, Total South Africa renewed its commitment to the Total Tara Rally when it announced a sponsorship of N$250 000 for this year’s event.

The managing director of Total Namibia, Fanuel Tjivau said that this year’s event would reach a new milestone as it is the 40th anniversary of the rally.

“Total celebrated five decades of motorsport sponsorship last year and the Total Tara Rally has over the years been an integral part of Total South Africa’s motorsport sponsorship strategy.

As a major international producer of petroleum products, Total views the sport of Motor Rallying as an ideal stage to showcase the quality and resilience of its fuels and lubricants under testing conditions,” he said.

The Total Tara Rally will be held on November 13 to 15 and will take place between Windhoek and Rehoboth. The rally will also serve as the fourth round of the 2008 Namibian Rally Championships and the first ten stages totalling 111km of special stages will count towards the Namibian championship.

The 659km rally will start at the municipal parking area opposite the Kalahari Hotel at 20h00 on November 13 with 28 special stages covering a distance of 317km. Most of the stages are spectator friendly, with one super special stage to be run on the Tony Rust Race Track at 20h00 on Friday night, while the final stage of the rally takes place at 12h00 on Saturday at the SKW Sports Club.

The organisers are hoping to attract about 30 entries including a strong contingent of South Africans. The defending champions, Team Total’s JP Damseaux and Andre Vermeulen who won last year’s event in their S2000 Toyota Run-X will be back to defend their title. Damseaux is currently in hot form after he recently won the South African National Rally Championship during the Swartland Rally in the Cape province.

Harald Lingner, who will be the clerk of the course for the third consecutive year, said that it was however still too early to say which other South Africans would be participating.

Tjivau said that the Total Tara Rally is considered to be one of the most gruelling rallies in southern Africa, with the rugged Namibian hinterland posing significant challenges to drivers and navigators. A look at the statistics of the Tara over the years reveal that nobody has ever won the Tara Rally three consecutive years nor three times in total.

“Only four drivers won two years in a row. Louis Cloete and Willem van Heerden did it in 1972 and 1973, Laurence Koch and Dippies Dippenaar in 1984 and 1985, Roelof Coertzen in 1993 and 1994 and more recently Namibia’s own Gerhard Truter, with that monster Audi Quattro, in 2003 and 2004,” he said.

Besides them only four others could take the honors twice, although not consecutively. They were veterans Geoff Mortimer (1976 and 1978), Sarel van der Merwe (1977 and 1981), Llewellyn Anthony (1988 and 1997) and Serge Damseaux (1996 and 2000).

“Victory in the Tara is therefore indeed a launching pad into the annals of honour in the sport of motor rallying,” Tjivau concluded.