CMC's Owen Turner & Matt Fowle have lead the field since the event started on Sunday evening. I believe they are on a boat to Greece at the moment.
Several Endurance & Road Rally type competitors are doing well at the moment - check out the ERA website.
Tony Michael is involved in the results system - well done ARM.
Tony Michael, Bob Blows and I manned the results on controls on day 1 - a sharpener in Kent on Sunday night (which included tests in Meredown & King's Woods and a few miles of Kentish lanes - which saw the demise of Car 9, a Triumph Dolomite which hit a tree on a 90 left). Paul & Peter Brewerton were also marshalling and there were many other familiar faces amongst the 100 signed on marshals. It was good to wave our friends off onto the ferry at Dover in the early hours of Monday morning before they headed off to the Somme.
As well as Owen & Matt leading early on in their Rover 25 other CMC crews are Richard Atherton / Rob Henchoz (Volvo PV544) and Ben & Mike Dawson (Ford Escort).
They arrived in Ancona today and are making their way on ferries to Greece from where an Acropolis Rally route takes them to Pireaus and then a boat to Egypt from where the route heads down the eastern edge of Egypt, a ferry to Saudi Arabia and then another ferry to Sudan and down through Kenya across to Namibia and arriving in Cape Town on 29th January.
Tony Michael is running a Yellowbrick GPS-based results service from Boreham - you can track each car at hourly intervals via the event website. Note the slow progress of car 44, Dave Gough who broke down at our control in King's Wood, was resuscitated by a handily placed Ian Mepham and limped to Dover before hitting further engine trouble in France - at one point yesterday he was still near Grenoble as the leaders arrived in Florence!
http://www.londoncapetownrally.com/index.html
Dave Gough was pushed onto the ferry at Ancona with head-gasket trouble now. Rachel Vestey missed the boat due to having repairs done following a slide into a roundabout in fog & black ice, but will catch up with the event in Greece tomorrow.
This is Andy Manston's gallery of the first day:
http://www.mandh-photography.co.uk/events/cape2012/
And photos from travelling photographer Gerard Brown:
http://www.londoncapetownrally.com/gallery.html
Owen Turner lost the lead a few days ago in Egypt, when many two-wheel-drive cars became stuck in sand on Snake Pass:
Ben and Mike Dawson suffered a broken stub axle before the Sudan/Ethiopia border crossing yesterday. The car has had an armed Sudanese guard in Dinder National Park while they wait for a replacement front strut to wing its way to Gederaf.
The 1.6 engined maestro (fueled by a single su carb) is having a good run maintaining a top 5 position so far.
41 of the 44 starters (plus a French Morgan crew who retired in Greece with a snapped chassis and then bought a Suzuki Jiminy to 'follow' the rally) arrived in Cape Town this afternoon. All three CMC crews finished - Owen Turner / Matt Fowle lost their early lead in the Egyptian sand (see above) and finished 5th o/a 1st front wheel drive car. Richard Atherton / Rob Henchoz 9th o/a 2nd Historic, Ben & Mike Dawson 29th o/a following a broken stub axle in Kenya and a mammoth 54 hour drive to catch the rally up after spending two days getting the car repaired. The two MG ladies crews - Jane Edginton / Gill Cotton and Rachel Vesty / Suzy Harvey were 8th and 28th o/a respectively - the latter never quite getting back the time dropped on an icy roundabout in Greece.
Well done to all the crews - fantastic achievement. Enjoy the celebrations in Cape Town.
Andy Actman / Andy Elcomb led the event in their Toyota Hilux following Owen's problems, until yesterday when the normally aspirated Subaru Impreza of Steve Blunt / Bob Duck took a three second lead on the fast SA gravel roads and then extended it by a further 38 seconds today before running out of petrol on the run-in to Cape Town and having to be rescued by fellow competitors to claim a well-earned last-minute win.
The only other retirements were the Triumph 2000 which crashed in Kent on the first night and a Porsche which caught fire in Kenya. The event website contains many tales of Derring Do - most cars had to be repaired, modified and fettled during the 29 days since leaving Westminster on New Year's Day.
Owen Turner & Rachel Vesty / Suzy Harvey will be on their way home soon to compete on the X Part Endurance, using some other Rover Centre 214s.
Tony Michael's superb GPS-based results service has kept us all up-to-date on http://www.londoncapetownrally.com/index.html
The on-event journalist, Syd Stelvio, posted this final article today:
At last! We finally see the silhouette of Table Mountain… and roll down the long drive lined with palm trees to the Table Bay Hotel - the South Atlantic a pebble throw away. We have made it.
It's an emotional moment. Tears roll down the faces of grown men. The weeks of tension finally evaporates in the hot sun. shrieks of joy from wives and girl friends. Sheer relief from mothers, all combine with hugs and kisses amid the froth of champagne spray. Engines are turned off for the last time.
It's been a tense day - Africa has been throwing surprises in our tracks from the moment we arrived in Egypt. Today, rally leader Steve Blunt, after extending his three second lead into a still slender 38 second margin, ran out if petrol. The gauge was faulty. Minutes ticked by waiting for someone to save the rally leaders.
All the Peugeots lined up alongside each other, crews sat on the roofs shaking hands, camera crews snapped away, as families and loved ones who have not seen driver or navigator for a month threw their arms around grimy shirts that looked as if they have been worn for weeks. The stories and adventures unfolded in South Africa's summer sun and the beer bottles lubricated dry throats, to improve upon the telling.
So, rocky goat tracks in Greece that followed on from dark woods in Kent and muddy tracks of the poppy fields of Northern France. Egypt's Snake Valley, to the thousands that cheered us all the way across Ethiopia, the amazingly rocky track that is Kenya's road to a place called Marsabit …Tanzania's muddy jungle trails …to a country called Namibia, so vast, so open, and so empty, one driver remarked: "Does anyone live here?"
In 14 countries, touching three Continents, driving 14,000 kilometres in 26 driving-days we have, today after reaching Cape Town, experienced an event only made possible by the combined enthusiasm and encouragement of many along the way… Tonight we now gather together for one last time, and cheer those who are taking home a silver trophy. But, deep down in our hearts, we are all agreed on one thing. All those who drove into Cape Town are very special winners.