Women’s Day racing thrills
The sixth round of the Western Cape championships provided plenty of drama at an oil-spill plagued Killarney circuit
THE SIXTH round of the Western Cape championship was staged in front of a decorative crowd of young ladies during the Women’s Day meeting at Killarney on Saturday.
The Masters V8s got the proceedings off in fine style when Marcel Angel took advantage of his pole position to grab a definitive early lead. It didn’t last, however, as Charles Arton and a surprisingly quick Richard Schreuder – a former Supercar superstar who was new to the big V8s – soon closed the gap.
Arton actually moved into first place at one stage before the former champion snatched it back. In the end it was Angel from Arton and Schreuder, with very little space between them.
The upset in the second race occurred when Fabio Tafani and Angel exchanged metal during an incident that allowed Arton into a lead he simply refused to relinquish. Angel recovered quickly enough to regain second, albeit only marginally ahead of a charging Gerhard Cloete.
Schreuder spun off and finished well back, while Jurgen zu Bentheim, from whom much had been expected, was a non-starter.
Steve Humble did enough to split the Porsche pilots during the early laps of the first Big Foot Express Sports and GT event. However, it all came to nought when he was forced to retire his Lola T86/90 after six laps.
The podium positions were then filled by Dawie Joubert (Porsche GT3 Cup), Johan Engelbrecht (Porsche GT2 R) and Francis Carruthers (Juno S2000), in both races.
After a period in hiding in the lower classes, Kosie Weyers bounced back to dominate both actionpacked Jive GTi Challenge events.
But while he was out in the clear there was the mother of all dust-ups behind him between Stiaan Kriel and Kosie Swanepoel, as they disputed second place.
Their difference of opinion was finally resolved when Kriel cannoned into Swanepoel during the second race. Although it spelt the end of his challenge, Kosie recovered sufficiently to retain second spot ahead of Fazal Jacobs.
Geoff Bihl (Porsche 944), Eric van der Merwe (Porsche 924 Turbo) and Piet Mathee finished in that order in both Charl Electrical Eng. Fine Car events. There was almost nothing to choose between Ray Cooper (98.423 percent) and Coenraad Matthee (98.401 percent) in the Index of Performance results.
The Formula Libre single-seater category suffered from the difference of the entrants’ performance levels.
This was emphasized when it took almost a full minute for second-placed Jaco Lambert, in a Formula Vee Lantis, to cross the line behind race winner Sean le Riche’s more muscular 2-litre VW Ray Seleka.
Martin Richards was in fine form in what turned out to be the only Mutlu Batteries Classic Car race of the day, as he whipped his Datsun across the line ahead of Neil Hawkins (Ford Escort 2-litre), Trevor Momberg (Ford Capri 3-litre) and the born again Richard Quixley (Datsun 240Z).
Unfortunately a layer of oil on the circuit resulted in the second race later in the afternoon, having to be called off.
The spilled oil also led to the cancellation of the second race of the Mike Hopkins Regional Motorcycle championship.
Race one was an all Kawasaki ZX-10R benefit with the Ninjas of Aran van Niekerk (Stunt SA/DMR), Ronald Slamet (Mike Hopkins) and Malcolm Rapson (Donfords) filling the top three positions.
The Classic/Powersport class belonged to the 650 twins, with Graeme Green on a Suzuki SV650 taking the win from Warren Guantario on the Calberg Kawasaki ER6.