Lesotho 400km ROOF OF AFRICA (as told by the inexperienced woman navigator)

This race was made possible by our Sponsors: Car Security & Sound Centre Goodyear Tyres Fuchs Lubricants

Brandon and I had previously completed and won 1 regional race before, so when he said that I could navigate for him at the notorious ROOF OF AFRICA I was extremely excited. He warned me that the race would be very difficult to navigate as experience is of utmost importance when attempting such a rough and trying race. And oh boy was he right!

Friday’s agenda consisted of the following:
5km track race in stadium which we decided to take easy so as not to damage the car before the prologue. We then had to drive in the race car on the Lesotho roads for 40km to the start of the prologue in Roma. By the time we arrived, my nerves were shot and I was wishing I had never climbed into the race car and wanted the whole thing to be over and done with. I can now relate to what all the competitors call ‘Racing Fever”.
We started the prologue from 7th position and I began to settle down for the 50km prologue that lay ahead of us.

We were going along well until half way through the prologue when I got us a tad bit lost, after I told Brandon to follow the direction one of the villagers was sending us in.
We later found out we were following dull light orange markings which must have been from an old route and we continued down this route for 8km.Luckily these markers joined up with the right route and we got back on track after loosing 10 minutes.

Start of race on Saturday was at Matsieng which is 50km away from our hotel, so we all have to be up at 5am for breakfast and start making our way to the start. We are starting from 14th position and the tension is high and the sound all the engines revving gets your nerves going once again.

The flag drops and we are off… 16 seconds behind Arnold Pistorius in his Class B. Brandon instructs me to get on the screamer to warn Arnold that we were wanting to pass and a few seconds later we moved up a place. We began the climb up the DON’T COUGH Pass which was steep with tight corners and I was constantly on the screamer so that we could pass the next 4 cars ahead of us. At the top of the Pass came long straight roads where the BAT could stretch her legs a little. We saw John Weir Smith had wrong slotted and caught up and passed him.

I then caused us to take a wrong turn and John passed us again.
We were hot on his heels when we saw Atung in the distance. All three of us wrong slotted and it turned into a dogfight with all of us trying to reach the right road first.
Now Atung lay ahead and John behind us. I once again got onto the screamer and Atung moved over for us to pass. We broke away from Atung although John was still close behind us.

Yes! You guessed it, I got us lost again and John got ahead.
We raced over huge boulders and through muddy rivers and I was loving every minute of it.
We came to our first de-control point and were lying 7th overall and 4th in Class.
Just a few kilometers after starting off from re-control we came to a t-junction which Brandon decided to turn right at.

We drove around the mountains for approx. ten minutes before he would calm down and listen to me telling him to go back to the t-junction so that we could make sure we were going in the right direction. As it turned out, we were meant to turn left at the t-junction. So ten minutes later we were on the race route again, keeping a good steady pace. This continued until I finally broke down and admitted to Brandon that I couldn’t continue racing any longer and that he had to stop for me to give in to natures calling. He was not impressed to say the least but stopped anyway, allowing Alfie and Ralph to pass us.

Finding it easier to concentrate with an empty bladder, I managed to keep us on the right track using both the road markings and route schedule. But disaster would strike again when I looked up for too long and couldn’t find my place on the route schedule again due to all the bouncing around in the car over the hard rocky terrain. We found our way into the forest section and after that we joined up with the prologue route from the day before and increased the speed as we knew the route. Some of the places in this section were so tight and twisty that I never thought we would make it to the DSP.

When we arrived at the DSP, we learned we had managed to retain our 4th position. Then we were off on our 2nd lap, up the DON”T COUGH Pass. At the top of the pass came the long fast roads.

We were discussing the fork in the road where John Weir Smith had previously wrong slotted and when we realized it, the fork lay ahead and there was no much time to react. Somebody had placed a pile of rocks in the centre of the two roads and we were closing in on them rather quickly. Brandon tried turning left BUT the right rear wheel slid over the edge of a 1 metre drop and the next moment I heard him telling me to hold on because the car was going to roll.

I remember seeing the front wheels lift in the air and seeing the sky and thinking it’s not going to roll but… it did! We luckily landed back onto our wheels but it ended our race for us!

THANK YOU to all our fellow competitors and friends who phoned right throughout the weekend to find out how we were doing after the accident

THANK YOU to our Sponsors
ALAN SHRANK (CSSC)
JC ERASMUS (GOODYEAR)
WILLY STOLTZ (FUCHS)

SPECIAL THANKS to
PRESIDENT OF THE ROAD CROSSINGS… BEVAN BERTHOLDT
BRETT and STEVEN PARKER
ANDREW and LOUISE and the 2 girls
BODO BERTHOLDT
FRANS CZEPEK
ACHIM BERGMANN

Back...