New teams get in on kart series action
SEVERAL new teams made their debut in round 2 of the S2R corporate karting series in East London on Saturday.
The first race of the day was the sprint race for ladies which is combined with the beginners race at present, but could soon become a free-standing event as interest grows.
Stacie Over made short work of the race, winning overall in fine style from young newcomer Brad de Kock. Richard Eales of Team CLMR was next up ahead of TKY’s Jared Bekker. Greg Thompson in the GT2 team pipped Eldin Jennings in the Timberland kart and Justin Weddell was the second woman home.
The top-three grid positions for the main event – the one-hour race – were separated by four hundredths of a second with Geoff Stephen putting the Unified Properties kart on pole ahead of reigning champions Cool Cubed Racing, driven by Jason Mark, and Pinpoint Constructions’ Jared de Kock in third. Louis Landman put in a mega lap to put new team CLMR in fourth spot ahead of DART, TKY, Timberland, and Nates Car Sales.
Current favourites and series leaders, NTT Volkswagen, had some issues which saw them relegated to the back of the grid for heat 1.
Heat 1 was closely contested, with the first three teams separated by a hair’s breadth for the opening laps, until the Cool Cubed machine suffered brake failure, causing them to spin out and lose touch with the leaders.
The De Kock brothers put in a sterling drive to finish second behind an on-form Unified Properties team in heat 1, with Cool Cubed Racing nursing their machine into an incredible third spot with no brakes.
The Nates Car Sales team had to retire with a broken seat, with mechanical woes putting an end to team GT2’s efforts.
Eli Vergara was carving his way through the field in the NTT machine, but suffered a mishap during one of the compulsory pitstops which delayed their progress.
Heat 2 was a reverse grid which put NTT on pole, but the TKY team managed to ace the Le Mans start, getting the jump on the field during the opening laps. The mechanical gremlins suffered by several teams in heat 1 were all sorted during the second one-hour heat and the weather held out until four laps from the end, when rain caused several drivers to spin out in the slippery conditions.
The switch to the new Kenda tyres has had the desired effect of much closer racing and the overall top-10 results after the two one-hour heats, were: 1 Unified Properties, 2 Pinpoint Construction, 3 Team DART, 4 NTT VW, 5 Cool Cubed Racing, 6 TKY Yamaha, 7 CLMR, 8 Timberland, 9 Nates Car Sales, 10 GT2.
The next event is scheduled for April 14. For more information on the series, contact Geoff Stephen on 079-500-6531, geoff@stephen2racing.co.za, or Neil Stephen on 082-373-5566, neil@stephen2racing.co.za.