DAVE ABRAHAMS
Local heroes shone in difficult conditions at the national championship Extreme Festival at Killarney on Saturday March 18, winning several categories and featuring strongly in others.
Capetonian Andrew Rackstraw (Sparco/RDSA Golf GTi) showed his mettle with a strong Qualifying performance in the headline Global Touring Cars/ SupaCup category, and chased home hotshot youngster Saood Variawa in a works Toyota, defending champion Robert Wolk (Chemical Logistics Corolla) and Nathi Msimanga in the second factory Corolla, finishing just two seconds adrift of the leader after a race-long four way battle.
Sadly, Josh le Roux’s Investchem/Vitro Frameless S3 went out on lap two and Michael van Rooyen in the third works Toyota 2 only lasted four laps.
Both were back for race two, however, for a front-row seat for the dice of the race as Rackstraw, Variawa and Msimanga fought it out over 12 epic laps to finish in that order, covered by little more than three seconds.
Bradley Liebenberg, Keegan Campos, Jonathan Mogotsi and Arnold Neveling put in two strong drives in the SupaCup category, with Liebenberg narrowly edging out Campos in both races (this after Campos completely lost it going into turn 1 in race 2 and pulled off a miracle save to stay in the race) with Mogotsi and Liebenberg taking a third and a fourth each.
Local karting hero Tate Bishop was a close fifth in class in race 1 but was unable to maintain the pace in race 2, averaging about half a second a lap slower than in the morning to finish seventh in class and 13th overall.
Franco Scribante, in his military green Porsche 997 nicknamed The General, took command of all three G&H Transport Extreme Supercar races, to record three emphatic wins on the day.
Reputed to have more than 720kW on tap, the wide-bodied coupe misbehaved ferociously in the corners but was uncatchable on the straights, powering away from the Lamborghini Huracan of early leader Jonathan du Toit and top qualifier Charl Arangies’ Audi R8 LMS GT3 in the first two outings. Arangies did not come out for race 3, allowing local Ferrari 488 GT3 pilot Marcel Angel to snatch a face-saving podium spot in the last race of the day.
Capetonians dominated the Sunbet ZX-10 Masters Cup races, scoring a 1-2-3 (Ronald Slamet, Trevor Westman and David Enticott) in race 1, as former multiple Regional champion simply walked away from the field, at one point leading by more than four seconds from a three-way fight for second between Westman, defending champion Graeme van Breda and Enticott.
Westman put in a late charge to close to within a second of Slamet at the end, but it was too little, too late, as Slamet took an easy win – and Enticott blitzed the champion on the very last lap to make it an all-Cape Town podium.
Van Breda and Jayson Lamb each pulled a brilliant start in race 2, slotting into second and third behind Slamet, but Westman was having none of it, coming up from fifth on lap one to second on lap three. He held the place in the teeth of a determined charge by Van Breda while Slamet disappeared into the middle distance to win by almost nine seconds.
Home driver Troy Dolinschek came up from a dismal start to win the first Investchem F1600 including Formula Ford Kent outing by little more than a second from Gerard Geldenhuys and birthday boy Jason Coetzee – only for Coetzee to be slapped with a 30-second penalty for jumping the start, which promoted Nicholas van Weely into third.
Coetzee made no such error in race 2, mixing it from the start with Gerard Geldenhuys and Antwan Geldenhuys, while Dolinschek made another poor start. Antwan Geldenhuys dropped back on lap six, promoting a charging Dolinschek to third behind Gerard Geldenhuys and Coetzee.
- Dave Abrahams is the public relations officer for Killarney Raceway.
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