The second round of the Toyota Dealer 400 Championship in Mpumalanga turned out to be a tough test for the Elegant Fuel/Sullwald team over the past weekend.

Elegant Fuel, a petroleum company based in Louis Trichardt, has been sponsoring father-and-son team Kallie and Quintin Sullwald since 2010. This year, reigning special-vehicle champions Hermann and Wichard Sullwald also became part of the Elegant Fuel team for the 2012 season. They won the championship with their Porter last year.

This season, Hermann and Wichard will once again go out in their Porter, while Kallie and Quintin will campaign a BAT.

Saturday’s race started in almost windless conditions on the Lydenburg track. Dry and dusty conditions made overtaking difficult, with the rocky terrain proving to be a major hazard to drivers. A couple of vicious mud holes also took a heavy toll.

Among these casualties were Quintin and Kallie. In only the second round of the race they found themselves stranded in a mud hole. They had to call it quits for the day after calling in the support team to pull the BAT out.

Herman and Wichard were able to finish the race, despite a bit of drama with race officials afterwards. They were hit with penalties for deviating from the route on the first of two 175 kilometre loops that made up the race. This saw the Sullwalds relegated to fifth place behind former SA champion Evan Hutchison and Danie Stassen in their BAT Venom.

After the team protested, they went to the top of the leader board, ahead of the Alberts and Du Plessis teams. The final scoring saw Herman and Wichard finish almost two seconds ahead of the Alberts team and three seconds ahead of the Du Plessis team.

The next round of the championship is the Atlas Copco 400 in KwaZulu-Natal on May 18 and 19. (Information supplied by Motorite Raching Team – Offroad).