Ellis, Thirion win Otji Rally

BRAAM Ellis and Francois Thirion survived the challenge of the demanding the 2011 Otjiwarongo Rally in their VW Golf 2.0.

Although Otjiwarongo provides some of the best rally roads in the country, the competitive nature of the participants ensured the elimination of more than 50 per cent of them as only four of the ten starters completed the event. The rally started off with a short but spectacular stage in the Paresis Showground and immediately showed what was to offer for the rest of the rally when Wilro Dippenaar and Mornay du Toit in their S2000 Toyota Run-X pipped Jaco van Dyk and Werner Gevers’ S2000 VW Polo by just one second. The second special stage of 11,8 km was no different with Wilro Dippenaar again coming up trumps by beating Jaco van Dyk by a close two seconds. Unfortunately the other biggest contenders for the overall position started experiencing technical problems during this stage.Hannes Arangies and Aisha Franz in their Toyota Corolla lost 12 minutes when they got stuck in a sand bank. Local favourites Richard Owen and Eugene Viviers had to stop because clutch problems and the Class S4 Subaru Impreza of Jaco Wiese and Eddie Holloway started experiencing electrical failure and could not finish the third stage. The third stage also caught out Jaco van Dyk when his Polo hit a tree stump and took out the front suspension.With Wilro Dippenaar three minutes ahead of the chasing pack after stage four he only had to do a clean run in to the end but misfortune struck again when his gearbox started to give selection problems. They decided to rather save the gearbox and retired. This left Braam Ellis and Francois Thirion to fend-off a spirited chase by the young Roland Himmel and S Pitsch in their Toyota Corolla, with Jandre Dippenaar and Riaan van der Westhuizen’s Toyota Hilux not far off the pace. Unfortunately Himmel’s challenge also came to an end in the fifth stage and handed the second place to Dippenaar and Van der Westhuizen in their Toyota Hilux.However, Dippenaar and Van der Westhuizen were entered in the Open Class and thus did not qualify for Overall National Championship points. This meant Zander Wiese and Ernest Thatcher driving a Toyota Corolla scored second position and Hannes Arangies/Aisha Franz in third place.The business community of Otjiwarongo again came up with huge support to enable the Redline Motor Club to stage the second leg of the 2011 Namibian National Rally Championships and were honoured by the Redline Motor Club at the prize giving function with souvenir awards to show their appreciation.