The opening round of the 2007 FIA Cross Country Rally World Cup, which includes a round in South Africa in July, took place in Spain and Portugal last weekend. The four-day Transiberico Rally, which covered a distance of more than 2 000 km including some 1 200 km of racing special stages, featured a stand-out performance by a South African-built Nissan Navara, privately entered by Belgian Gregoire de Mevius' Team Overdrive and driven by former world rally champion Colin McRae of Scotland.
McRae, making his debut for the Belgian team, upstaged the factory Mitsubishi and Volkswagen teams and their purpose-built off road rally vehicles to claim second fastest time in the Thursday prologue, second fastest time over Saturday's two stages combined and fastest cumulative time for the final two stages on Sunday.
In the process the Scot and his Belgian co-driver Jean-Marc Fortin beat Spanish multiple former world rally champion Carlos Sainz (Volkswagen Race Touareg 2) and the Mitsubishi Evos of former Dakar Rally winner Luc Alphand of France and Spain's Nani Roma.
But for a leaking brake hose that brought their Navara to a halt 100 km into Friday's 190-km special stage two and forced them to miss out on both of the day's stages, they might have seriously disturbed the distinguished Sunday podium of winner Sainz, runner up Roma and third-placed Carlos Sousa of Portugal (Volkswagen Race Touareg 2). Alphand was fourth while McRae was classified 28th.
Team Overdrive boss De Mevius was more than pleased with the weekend's performance. "Our small team ended on a high note. Once Friday's problem was cured and the team made the decision to carry on with the event on Saturday, our Nissan Navara proved perfectly reliable over Saturday and Sunday's 740 km of stages.
"Both the engine and the chassis of the Navara proved very competitive. This was a highly challenging event and I believe we made a real step forward with regard to the pickup's preparation. It really is the ideal machine for a privately-run operation."
The Navara pickup was built last year in Nissan Motorsport's Midrand workshops and is identical to the three Sasol-supported Navaras that are competing so successfully in the Special Production class of the Absa South African Off Road Car Championship.
"In fact, this car made its first competitive outing in the Lydenburg round of last year's championship in the hands of Century Property Developments' Mark Corbett, finishing third in an historic Nissan 1-2-3 behind the Navaras of former national champion Duncan Vos and reigning champion Hannes Grobler," said Nissan Motorsport general manager Glyn Hall.
"This particular racing Navara is the 19th off road racing version of the Nissan Hardbody and Navara locally built by us at Nissan Motorsport," said a proud Hall. "It was specially built for the privateer Belgian Overdrive team of Gregoire de Mevius, who himself drove a South African-built Nissan Hardbody in the 2002 Dakar Rally. Overdrive ran it in this year's Dakar Rally for former Polish and European rally champion Krzysztof Holowczyc, but unfortunately it was badly damaged when it rolled end over end while performing well on the event.
"I have to say all of us at Nissan Motorsport are very proud of our South African bakkie and its giant-killing performance against the factory Volkswagens and Mitsubishis," Hall added.
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