Full throttle ahead for exciting national champs
ADRENALIN pumping racing action is set for the famed East London Grand Prix circuit next weekend when the annual South African Extreme Festival National Circuit Racing Championship roars into town for the fourth round of the 2018 edition.
Headlined by the extremely fast Sasol Global Touring Car championship, some thrilling racing will definitely be on the cards.
A Sasol GTC Championship roundtable was held at Hemingways yesterday morning, where the GTC team officially launched the East London leg of the event.
“We feel we have a spectacular, aspirational formula featuring the best cars, best drivers and the best teams in South Africa competing in the Sasol GTC Championship,” said team manager Vic Maharaj.
“We do have other classes, but the main class is the GTC, where you have the top drivers in the country, like two-time GTC champion, Michael Stephen, who definitely has a target on his back, a local boy from East London Robert Wolk and Gennaro Bonafede, amongst others.
“It is a very close championship. At the moment, the top three are only separated by six points going into the fourth race of the championship, and I think it’s going to be a very tight championship run in towards the end of the year.”
The East London leg will see the launch of a new system that should make next weekend’s racing all the more entertaining.
“The cars are now running at the maximum power of 500 horsepower with what we call a push to pass activation,” said GTC director Gary Formato.
“What that does is the cars will be going at 450 horsepower, then they have a number of times in the race when they can press the push to pass button and that gives them an extra 50 horsepower, and that is obviously a strategy that each driver and car will take upon themselves to work out and give them a chance to pass the guy in front of them.
“So this will be the first time that we use the push to pass in an actual race itself, so that should be pretty exciting for us.
“The reason why we chose East London to launch it is because of the nature of the circuit. It is an incredibly fast, long sweeping track. It is the fastest track in the country. Certainly fortune favours the brave here, so we expect with this activation the race will become even closer and more exciting than before.”
To get people interested in next weekend’s event and give fans a chance to learn more about the championship, Sasol Garage in Abbotsford will have an activation today where GTC cars will be on show.
This will allow people to come and engage with the drivers and cars to find out a bit more about the race. The activation will start at 11am. The official raceday for the Extreme Fest will be next Saturday.