A strong showing for TimesLIVE rookie racer at Zwartkops Raceway
The fourth leg of the Extreme Festival powered by Coca-Cola came and went at the Zwartkops raceway in Pretoria at the weekend.
As part of the GR Cup media challenge competing for TimesLIVE against motoring journalists from four other local publications, and a regional manager from SuperSport, we share the racing space with Toyota dealers in GR Corollas and Toyota development drivers in GR 86 coupes in the largest single grouping of racing machinery and bodies in the series.
Again the large GR Cup field lived up to its promise of action with 25 cars roaring off the starting blocks. The six development drivers started at a fair distance to lessen the chaos while the GR Yaris/Corolla pack fielded 19 cars after a few debutants from the Toyota dealer network.
SuperSport's Nabil Abdool was in his element as usual, qualifying at the top of the field with a time of 1:11.571 for race one. In second place was dealer man Mario de Sousa (Motus Toyota) in a GR Corolla with a 1:12.013 and in third place was GR Academy manager Devon Scott with a time of 1:12.166 in one of the older GR Yaris manuals.
I started fourth on the media/dealer grid for race one at midday after posting a qualifying time of 1:12.324 early on Saturday morning, ahead of the MD of the Toyota Gazoo Racing driving academy Paul de Vos with 1:12.434.
Heat one got off without a hitch, but seldom do race drivers malign motorsport for its inherent frights and dangers, at least not in public or in the heat of the moment. While that is not a baseless critique expressed mostly in the aftermath, one cannot guarantee an incident-free outing or the trading of coats of paint when racing and which nearly happened to me on lap two when De Vos capitalised on the smallest of gaps to squeeze past me.
In a split second decision to sustain the pressure and risk a mirror or something worse, I chose to relinquish the position, waving the Toyota man on his way, thus gifting class peer Abdool an extra cushion in the process.
It was a lost cause, though, as Abdool had opened a sizeable gap between himself and the chasing trio of De Sousa, Scott and De Vos. Meanwhile, our front running skirmish had opened up a comfortable lead from the rest of the field and I finished race one in fifth, but second in the class.
Race two started after 3pm with me not in a better position in fifth overall, but still second in our GR Yaris class behind Abdool. Again, the racing was a hard charged affair so much that our class experienced its first racing incident since the series began in March. Lawrence Minnie of AutoTrader connected with Kyle Kock of Car Magazine, with the latter's car suffering terminal damage and limping off to the pits. Minnie was able to finish the race and collected maximum points.
My points haul has improved my position in the overall driver standings. I occupy second place behind Abdool, with three more races left in the series.
Zwartkops was an otherwise fantastic outing for racing. There were no injuries from any of the racing incidents, thankfully, and the spectators added to the magic, some of them arriving at 5am to secure top spot for viewing.
The round five race will be held in East London on July 19. We hope to meet and greet some the TimesLIVE readers from the region.
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