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By Collin Matiza
THE cream of local motor rally dri-vers will once again be seen in action at Norton Country Club this Saturday when the 2011 national championship bursts into life with the staging of the Norton Rally.
Saturday’s Norton Rally will officially mark the start of this year’s national championship series and it has attracted most of the country’s top motor rally drivers.
Mike Exton, the chairman of the local motor rally organising committee, said yesterday that they were expecting more than 10 entries for this Saturday’s season-opener in Norton.
Among the entries are two-time FIA African Rally Championship Drivers’ champion Jamie Whyte and former national champion Craig Green.
Jamie Whyte will be making his first appearance on the local scene since he successfully defended his FIA ARC Drivers’ crown in August last year when he drove his Subaru N10 to victory during the 2010 Toyota Zimbabwe Challenge Rally in Harare.
The Toyota Zimbabwe Challenge Rally was the last leg of the tough FIA ARC series, which Jamie Whyte also won in 2009, becoming the third Zimbabwean to achieve this remarkable feat after Abe Smit and young Conrad Rautenbach.
Jamie Whyte (50) has already indicated that he will be back to compete in the FIA ARC series this year where he will be aiming to record a hat-trick of victories in the tough continental motor rallying competition.
The Toyota Zimbabwe Challenge Rally will this year act as the ope-ning round of the ARC series and it will be staged in and around Harare during the weekend of March 11 to 13.
And Jamie Whyte will have a chance to fine-tune himself for this race when he takes part in this Saturday’s Norton Rally at the Norton Country Club.
The veteran driver will once again have his tried and trusted lieutenant Phil Whyte as his co-driver and they will be fighting for the top honours on Saturday with Green and his navigator Exton.
Green is still smarting from surrendering his national championship title to Jamie Whyte’s young brother Shaun last year and it’s no secret that he is itching to regain his crown this year.
And this starts by him winning the first event of the year at Norton on Saturday.
Sadly, the man who snatched the national title away from Green last year, Shaun Whyte, will not be among the starting line-up in Norton on Saturday.
Shaun Whyte said yesterday that he was not racing on Saturday, as he doesn’t have a car at the moment.
He said that he has handed the Subaru that helped him to clinch the national title last year to his niece, young Rowan Whyte, the son of two-time African motor rallying champion Jamie Whyte.
Rowan Whyte has entered this Saturday’s Norton Rally with his co-driver Craig Archenoul, who also happens to be the son of Jamie Whyte’s navigator, Phil.
The two young men will be making their second appearance in the local motor rallying scene after they took part in the Jialing Rally as a team at Donnybrook in Harare in November last year.
Saturday’s Norton Rally has also attracted a number of the country’s other top drivers such as Chase Attwell, Big “Bigs” Chitima, Sherwin Evans, Jess Watson, Laureen Marufu, Michelle Fortmann and Richard Robinson, who is coming out of retirement.
Zambia’s Mohamed Essa will also be competing on Saturday as a guest driver.
“Mohamed Essa is only coming to race on Saturday as a guest driver because this event is not part of the Zim-Zam Rally series which is designed for Zimbabwean and Zambian drivers.
“But his presence will definitely add some spark and excitement to this Saturday’s event,” Exton said.
Saturday’s event will start at 10am at the Norton Country Club and will finish at the Sables Motorsport Club in the Eastlea area of Harare at around 5pm.
Exton said Saturday’s action will all be centred around the Norton Country Club and they will be using the same format that they used during same event last year.