Extreme Festival Zwartkops Raceway February 2024
The first race event of the 2024 season was finally here and the drivers and crew were eager to dust off the cobwebs to see who had worked a little harder on their cars during the break. Sarel and the team at 8V Performance are still working on the development of my other car’s engine, which meant I had to bring the two-door Golf out for this event. I spent Friday getting the car, which has been on trestles for nearly two years, set up properly. I was quite worried as the times I was expecting off the trailer were nowhere near what I wanted them to be running in the high 1 min:14s which was way off pace and needed some drastic adjustment if we wanted to stand a chance of doing well. In the last session and by playing around with the car’s alignment, I managed to get into the lower 14s, which was not great and with new rubber on for qualifying, I was hoping to dip into the 13s which was semi – respectable.
Qualifying
In qualifying on Saturday morning, I managed to dial in the best time of 1min14.5 which was not exactly great. That put me in 2nd place in Class B and 0.5 behind Michael Grobler, who had significantly improved his game. One thing about racing is that it has an amazing ability to clip your wings at the best of times, especially when you think you have everything sorted out and all that is needed is for you to get in and drive.
Heat 1
Saturday was scorching hot in more ways than one because at Turn 2, with adrenaline pumping and everyone eager to get a good exit for the back straight, was an accident waiting to happen. Fortunately, I managed to avoid the heat in the kitchen which was an incident between the Subaru and Golf 7 of Lindsay Clur that happened right in front of me. Unfortunately, this caused me to lose a few positions which meant the chase was on to try catch up to Weyers (Opel) and Grobler in the Golf. In a 10-lap sprint race losing ground like this it is not easy to claw it back – however the Shield Golf’s has a ‘never give up’ attitude and managed to catch up 7 seconds and crossed the finish line around 2 seconds behind Grobler, who drove exceptionally well and finished just behind Weyers in super quick Opel. The best part of the race was the crowd cheering the SHIELD Golf on as we started to claw back some distance lap after lap with an outside chance of a victory which made it great spectator value.
Heat 2
Aiming to improve on the previous race, and with a better chance of keeping up close to Weyers and Grobler, I was optimistic that we were in with chance to turn the tables. Luck would have it that the two class A cars that spun off started behind me and created havoc and a lot of problems for me in the early laps muscling their way past in some of the corners. Unfortunately, this worked against me, and I could not bridge the gap between myself and Grobler giving me on overall 2nd place on the day.
The SHIELD TEAM will get back to the drawing board, and you can bet your bottom dollar we will be back with a vengeance at the next race.
Big thanks to SHIELD and my awesome pit crew Mel and Moosa who help make it all happen.
SEE YOU ALL AT THE NEXT EVENT
