Gemmel looks for a hat-trick

Johnny Gemmell lines up for the 2010 Osram Rally chasing a hat trick of wins in his Castrol Team Toyota Auris S2000 after clinching both the last two events after closely fought battles.

In the Rally of South Africa he beat Jan Habig by just seven tenths of a second and in the VW rally he managed a winning margin of double that over Enzo Kuun.

While a glance at the points table shows Gemmell and Kuun tied on 88 points each, the momentum swung towards Gemmel after he took the high ground in the Volkswagen Rally as the first contender to win two events in the current season. His two wins are backed up by a second and a fourth place.

The Osram Rally occupies a unique spot in the Sasol South African Rally Championship as the only event run for the greater part on public roads closed off for the duration of the stages. It is a fast and compact one-day event that delivers the highest average special stage speeds of any of the eight championship rounds. An added challenge is that it takes place at high altitude with the start in Barkly East at around 1800 metres and the event moving up above 2000 metres at times from there.

“The unique nature of the Osram Rally makes it one of the more strategically challenging events in our championship,” says Glyn Hall, Castrol Team Toyota team principal. “The speed of the stages require that the engines run at peak revs for the longest time on any event while the altitude robs the cars of power. A major part of the pre-event strategy for this event is to achieve the best balance possible with the choice of gear ratios. Do you go long or short with your ratios to favour the long high-speed sections or the equally important changes in elevation? This is always a burning question in the mountains.”