Mopar Champs all revved up for season
IT is going to be an exciting year for motorsport in South Africa, with one of the most exciting events taking place at the end of the month.
The 2017 Mopar South African Endurance Championship is ready for a significant step up, amid new plans for the series, as entries stream in for the season-opening Mopar Goldfields 6-Hour at the Phakisa Freeway in Welkom next Saturday.
This year the SA Endurance championship (SAEC), not only runs alongside the new South African GT Challenge in a bumper weekend, but the Mopar series will step up a significant gear as it runs as a SA National Championship for the first time, along with new cars and competitors, live streaming of the race day and a new Super Pole qualifying shoot-out among the changes.
“We are looking forward to our best year yet,” SAEC boss Roger Pearce said. “We have a good entry so far, but we are still waiting for some pretty impressive new machinery to join the line-up before entries close,” he said.
“More good news is that the entire race day will be live streamed in each of the Mopar SA Endurance race meetings this year, starting with Phakisa.
“We also have a Super Pole qualifying format where the top 10 cars will fight it out and, of course, we race together with the new SA GT Challenge, in what is set to become among SA’s most exciting sporting attractions going forward.”
Perhaps the most exciting news, is the arrival of a few new cars, with an Aqila coupe sports racer making its race debut in the hands of regular SA Endurance winners Francia Carruthers and Johan Engelbrecht.
There will also be an international flavour with British driver Nigel Greensall lining up in one of the Nash prototypes.
The Phakisa meeting will see two SA GT Challenge races, a 12-lapper and then a 45-minute race at midday, before the 6-hour starts at 13h00 with seamless action right through to sunset.