BEST PRIVATEER IN SOUTH AFRICAN RALLY CHAMPIONSHIP
Born 21 February 1955 Anthony Edward “Tony” Ball started navigating in Natal Regularity Rallies 1972 as a seventeen year old enthusiast with a variety of drivers that included Roger Downard, Malcolm Saville and Louis Botha. Driving on a few club rallies however led to him building his own car in 1977 and very ambitiously entered International rallies such as the Asseng, Hepolite and Castrol International Rally.
The rally bug bit hard and after having rolled rather substantially during practice his Datsun P510 1600 SSS was upgraded to a Nissan Stanza for the 1982 season and a fairly successful 1983 season led to inclusion into the Nissan Dealer Team for 1984. In 1986 the ex-Hannes Grobler Nissan Langley (on a Stanza floorpan) arrived with 1600 power (which was disappointing) but it resulted in winning the Natal Rally Championship. Though Nissan was extremely happy with his results and supported him extensively with parts and incentive money the Langley was simply not competitive against the new Volkswagen Golf entries.
In mid 1987 Tony acquired a modified 1600cc Volkswagen Golf MkII which started a 22 year relationship with the People’s car. Becoming a member of the Volkswagen privateer team from 1988 Tony would enjoy assistance with spares, tyres, fuel, body shells and running costs as each model changed.
In 1992 Tony upgraded to a powerful VW Golf MkII 2.0 16v GTi which proved exceptionally quick but somewhat unreliable. The Golf MKIII followed with two more Natal Rally Championship victories in 1997 and 1998. In 2001 he upgraded to the original VW Polo and in 2006 Tony received the best rally car of his entire career – the ex-Jan Habig VW Golf MkIV with all the “Right Stuff” – sequential gearbox, 2.0 liter 20v engine, big brakes, proper shockabsorbers and much more.
When the factory moved onto the latest VW Polo in 2007 Tony opted to rather retire from active participation as the costs for a true privateer to remain competitive had simply become prohibitive and he felt that nothing would ever compare to the Golf 4 experience.
Having built 14 rally cars in his career and managing a 79% finish record over 515 events certainly proved remarkable. He is the only individual to have won a national class title both as driver and navigator having won the A7 class as driver in the year 2000 and the A6 class as navigator for Craig Trott in 2008.
From 2009 Tony assisted in the organizing of the annual Tour de Natal national championship rally in KZN and in 2012 he was team coordinator for Jan Habig in the Ford Fiesta S2000. Tony enjoyed a period of Off Road racing in a single seater JRE but after having nearly drowned in the car he decided to build a classic Lancia Fulvia 1300 for rallies. The car proved competitive in it’s class but rough stages claimed it’s toll and after having rolled he car into the sugarcane in March 2020 he decided to keep the car for tarmac only events.
In 2016 Tony sold his very successful Bulwer Park Service Station but instead of really retiring a moment of weakness saw him tackle his final rally car project, a replica of the Datsun 180U in which Tony Fall and Franz Boshoff won the 1973 Total International Rally. The project was completed February 2021 at age 66.
A truly remarkable career as privateer in South African rallying!
For the record:
Tony Ball did a total of 608 events since 1972 either as driver, navigator, organizer or official.
Interesting Statistics:
Number of drivers he navigated – 35
Number of navigators that he had as driver – 36
Number of rallies started – 575
Number of rallies completed – 426
Number of events Time-Barred – 3
Number of vehicles in which he had competed – 70
Number of rallies / off road races as driver – 464
Number of Non-Starts – 9
Finishing record overall – 74%
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29B Tony Ball – Rex Boreham – NMCC – Nissan Stanza. 19th Overall 041539. Badly slipping clutch (2) 
13 A7 Tony Ball – Martie Olivier – Bulwer Park Volkswagen Golf A3 GTi 2.0 
16C Tony Ball – Ronel Dahms – NMCC – Valvoline Nissan Langley 1.6. 17th Overall 10765sec. 025925. (2) 
16C Tony Ball – TBC – Nissan Exa 
1981 Dunlop Midlands Rally 16 Tony Ball – TBC – Datsun P510 SSS 1.8. 5th Overall 
19901110 Castrol 7 Hour Killarney 36D Johan van Loggerenberg – Hilton Botha – Tony Ball – Mazda Motorsport Mazda 323 EGi 
19910713 Tony Ball – Silver Falcons 
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Tony Ball – SAAF Silver Falcons
Published by: Patrick Vermaak
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