As 2009 draws to a close Toyota will mark the end of an era for Toyota Motorsport as it transitions from a division of South Africa’s largest motor manufacturer to a privately controlled entity backed by Toyota South Africa. While this opens up new horizons and challenges for Toyota Motorsport, it also sees the end of what has been an exceptionally successful period spanning close to 20 years.
TEXT: Toyota South Africa. IMAGES: Motorpics.
During this time, under the management of the quietly spoken Wammy Haddad, Toyota South Africa emerged as the dominant force in local motorsport, especially in national championship rallying. It is this highly competitive team that will form the foundation of the new privately managed organisation to be run by Glyn Hall.
Wammy joined Toyota in December 1990 to take up the challenge of raising the level of competiveness of a team, that up until that time, had featured well both technically and competitively but lacked consistency in a highly competitive environment.
Toyota first appeared as a national championship rally winner in 1968 when Jan Hettema and Raggy Schjolberg won that year’s Moonlight Rally. The pair followed that up with a win in the Tour Natal Rally. These two wins combined with consistent finishes in the other five events in the 1968 championship saw Hettema and Schjolberg secure Toyota South Africa’s first championship win. Hettema repeated this success in 1969, this time together with Franz Boshoff.
A lean spell followed for Toyota with the advent of the super fast Group B rally cars and the transfer of the Audi Quattro technology (virtually unbeatable in international competition) to South Africa with few results for Toyota through the seventies and early Eighties.
A new era for South African rallying dawned in 1989 when South Africa adopted a unique new rally formula for the National Championship based on four-wheel drive cars fitted with naturally-aspirated 2-litre engines. Sound familiar? Sure it does – this is the basis of the highly successful S2000 formula that has evolved internationally in the past four years and has been our premier rally class since 2005.
In this ultra-competitive period in South African rallying, four manufacturers fielded cars for as many as ten top class competitors with Toyota the class of the field.
Up until the time that Wammy joined Toyota, the company had won just 17 national championship rallies in 22 years. During his 19 year spell, 74 national championship wins were added to the total, a total that falls just four victories shy of eclipsing the total number of wins scored by all other manufacturers together during this time. It is this success that has made Toyota the dominant manufacturer in the 49-year history of the South African rally championship. Two seasons in particular underlined that dominance – the 1995 and 1996 championships where Serge Damseaux won seven of the eight events in each of those two years.
An outstanding feature of this period for Toyota was the close working relationship that developed between the team and Serge Damseaux. This close understanding between team, manager and driver of just what was required to be successful led to a string of nine drivers’ championships for Damseaux (out of his total of ten) and 14 manufacturers’ championships for Toyota with successive manufacturers’ titles over the past 12 years.
Fundamental to the success in the manufacturers’ championship has been the role played by privateers with significant support provided with Wammy always available to provide guidance and assistance together with a clear path to progression through the classes.
During the past 20 years there have been numerous changes in direction in the rules for the premier class in rallying. On each occasion Toyota has been able to adapt and field superbly competitive vehicles from the outset. This without being able to draw on any engineering support from the parent company in Japan.
When the rules changed to ban the 2-litre 4X4 cars that had proved so successful, Toyota was caught short without a suitable competitor for the top class. Undeterred the team chose to take on the field with an A8 class car, one class down from the top class, as a stop gap and went on to score a stunning win first time out with this car and the championship that year as well.
When it became clear that the FIA was looking to move to a new reasonably priced and competitive regional formula, Wammy Haddad became a forceful campaigner for the adoption of S2000 as both our premier national championship class and the premier regional FIA rally class. Based on his experience and high level of success with 2-litre naturally-aspirated 4X4 rally cars, together with Andre van der Watt, he was a powerful lobbying force with the FIA to ensure that a true regional competitor perspective was adopted by the FIA when they finalised the S2000 rules, highlighting a number of potentially expensive pitfalls.
The engineering approach adopted for the RunX was one of functional simplicity, one that provided excellent performance without the expensive add-ons that look good, add to the cost of rally cars, but don’t add that much in terms of performance.
When the FIA homologation inspection took place it was attended by a representative from Peugeot in France who at the time were busy preparing the 207 for its entry into S2000. This representative was heard to comment that they, Peugeot, had perhaps gone a little too sophisticated in their approach and misread the requirements of a true regional rally car that was so well engineered into the RunX.
Toyota Motorsport was the first organisation in the world to build and compete in an event with an S2000 car – the 2005 Tour Natal Rally – and went on to win four of the eight events that year. If it were not for a minor electrical fault in that first event, Serge Damseaux would likely have been a winner first time out.
In the frantic world of international rallying, Toyota Motorsport was narrowly beaten by FIAT in the race to achieve the first full FIA S2000 international homologation. The RunX was, however, just the second S2000 car to achieve this distinction. The RunX S2000 did, however, achieve the distinction of being the first ever S2000 car to compete in a round of the World Rally Championship.
This was in the 2006 WRC Wales Rally GB when Alistair McRae gave the RunX its WRC debut. After a number of teething problems on the first day of the event, McRae stunned the established international class N4 competitors with a number of quickest stage times for the class, prompting a number of seasoned competitors and enthusiasts to comment that the RunX had provided a convincing display of the potential of S2000.
Toyota Motorsport is to date the only manufacturer in the world to have homologated a second generation S2000 car. This was achieved with the FIA homologation of the Auris in September of this year. It is this second generation S2000 from Toyota that has done so much to inject an element of intense competition into the Sasol South African National Rally Championship over the past eighteen months. Stage times now need to be recorded down to tenths of a second to separate competitors, and this year’s championship saw Johnny Gemmell and Hergen Fekken go into the last event with just one point separating them.
The introduction of the Special Production vehicle class in the Absa South African National Off-Road Racing Championship brought with it the challenge of developing the latest generation Hilux into event-winning form to take on Nissan with its vast store of experience gained on the Dakar Rally. The Hilux showed its true form in the 2009 season when it proved to be arguably the quickest SP class vehicle in the field. The first win for the Hilux came at the Carnival City round this year when Gary Bertholdt took his privately entered Hilux, built to Toyota Motorsport specification, to a fine win. Anthony Taylor underlined the fact that the Hilux was now the vehicle to beat in the SP class when he won the final event of the year. Added to the dominant success in rallying are three Manufacturers’ Championships in off-road racing for the Hilux.
Another feature of Wammy Haddad’s term at Toyota Motorsport has been the relationship with title sponsor Castrol. This relationship has proved to be one of the most enduring and successful in South African motorsport.
Strategic decisions within Toyota South Africa have dictated change within the organisation of Toyota South Africa’s motorsport operations. After a competitive bid process the company has awarded Glyn Hall a contract to take the team forward. Glyn faces new challenges, but with a solid foundation to build on.
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