Sarel van der Merwe & I is probably the most honest summary of the best known motorsport personality ever to come from South Africa. Rather a bold statement, but even though we have had the likes of World F1 Champion, Jody Scheckter, and many motorcycling World Champions including the likes of Kork Ballington their international exploits came at a time when they sadly did not enjoy the exposure they deserved in South Africa.
Sarel van der Merwe was loud, controversial and “in your face” as the 11 time South African Rally Drivers Champion and if he was not involved in any other South African Championships he would have something to say about it that would inevitably bring comments in defence and criticism when he inevitably (deliberately) stepped on sensitive toes.
What a wonderful era it was during the Group One era where manufacturers such as Ford, BMW, Alfa Romeo and Mazda went head to head and much as everyone certainly supported their favourite manufacturer, the motorsport public sided with their favourite driver.
No matter what, if Sarel van der Merwe won on Saturday, the manufacturer he would be driving for would sell on Monday and if he failed it was the fault of anyone of the opposition drivers – never the car! Nobody would argue that Tony Viana became the face of BMW and the likes of Nicolo Bianco and Abel D’Oliveira flew the Alfa Romeo flag after Arnold Chatz. Then the Sierra XR8 came and Serge Damseaux stepped in for some of the attention.
Sarel started in Datsun, then built a great relationship with Bernie Marriner at Ford before totally dominating the SA scene with Audi (under the umbrella of VW and expertise of Geoff Mortimer). Internationally Sarel van der “Meer” became a Porsche household name at Le Mans 24 Hour and winning the Daytona 24 Hour in America had Sarel spending more hours at airports than his home.
Extensive travelling is seriously tiring and his decision to call time was respected and then he scared himself for a few years in the ex-Bobby Olthoff Ford Fairlane V8 in Classic Racing and creating the Spirit of Africa 4×4 Series.
During all this there was an unhappy period when Sarel notched up an inevitable record of 14 retirements from rallies in South Africa. At the time he had only retired from rallies on 13 occasions in his entire career! If anything, this Golf gave Sarel the middle finger and he was not impressed!
After the awesome era of the Quattro rallying had moved into a more affordable and sensible era of “standard” based cars. The down side was that these cars had to be developed from scratch and inevitably reliability proved testing.
Sarel is not known as a patient person when reliability influences potential results and by the time they arrived in Cape Town for the NGK Rally the Southern Sun Volkswagen Golf A2 GTi Synchro 2.0 sported a very uncomplimentary sticker reading “ I would rather play Golf, than drive one” on the rear of the car.
Not something any manufacturer would appreciate from their leading star driver and not even winning the Castrol International Rally could really mend failing relations. No matter, the name on everyone’s lips as always was Sarel van der Merwe. Love him or hate him, you simply had to know about him.
The era ended and the Golf became the weapon of choice for Jerry Bailey and Brian Hoskins in te WP Rally Championship before changing hands to Shaun Jones and Billy Thorpe. Sadly, reliability hampered their attempts and now this car has been rebuilt completely.
Move on 34 years and Sarel van der Merwe got to drive his most “ hated” rally car again with Brian Hoskins as “navigator” at Killarney. Now Brian Hoskins is not short of straight answers either but admitted that both he and Sarel felt “emotional” whilst lapping Killarney.
Does this mean the Golf was forgiven? Well depends on whether you asked Sarel van der Merwe or I ….
Sarel stepped into the Golf and immediately felt comfortable, as though he drove it “yesterday”, and whenever he was outside the car there were people requesting selfies and signatures. Old Wiel magazines and even a beautiful model of the Le Mans 956 Porsche came around for autographs.
The day simply too short to absorb everything and now the “guest” appearance may well find it’s way to the 25/26 July 2025 Algoa Rally.
Motorsport is a bitter sweet sport and now, many years later, one can appreciate the disappointments and successes from a neutral perspective.
Added together it wrote the history of South African motorsport and it gave us Sarel van der Merwe or I?
A privilege.
PS Thank you Shaun Jones, Owen Jones, Maxie Jonker, Gerhart Hibbert, Desmond Easom, Marizca Radyn and the many more.
Published by: Patrick vermaak
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