Hergen Fekken and Pierre Arries have stolen an unlikely victory in the Osram Rally, round six of the Sasol SA Rally Championship run in the Barkly East Southern Drakensberg area in their BP VW Polo.

Fekken beating the dominant Castrol Toyota Run X of Johnny Gemmel and Peter Marsh and BP VW Polo teammate Enzo Kuun and Guy Hodgson, who tied for second with Gemmel, by just one second.

In a dramatic day that saw Gemmel opening up the lead early on before suffering brake failure to let his Toyota teammate Marc Cronje and Robert Paisley into the lead to allow the all new Auris to lead the way on its debut.

Gemmel droped further back before fight back to challenge Fekken for second before Cronje dramatically crashed out of a 30-second lead on the penultimate stage.

The rally looked to be in the bag for Fekken who started the lasst stage with an unexpected 34 second lead, with a titanic two way duel for second. But Fekken lost huge time in that stage to turn it into a three-way fight to the finish between Fekken, Kuun and Gemmel, which was resolved in the way of a delighted Fekken, who beat his tied rivals by a second in the end in one of the closest finishes in SA rally history...

JP Damseux and Cobus Vrey finished third almost a minute behind the leaders in their Total Toyota Run X, from the third BP Polo of Jan Habig and Douglas Judd. Sixth were Production Class winners, ecx track racer Hein Lategan and Johan van der Merwe in their Dastech Subaru Impreza STI, who beat ninth placed fellow ex-racer Charl WIlken and Greg Godrich in their similar car.

The Subarus sandwiched the improving Jon and Dougie Williams' S2000 VW Polo and finished ahead of 10th placed Nick Ryan and Andre Vermeulen's S2000 Toyota Run X

One of the most impressive results of the weekend was Etienne Lourens and Elvine Coetzee's drive to eleventh and the first front driven car hopme in their production class N3 Ford Ka. They beat the various modified cars home in a stirring drive.

Another impressive run was that of yet another track racer, Dave Compton who steered his Toyota Yaris home to an impressive baby class A5 victory.