Round 7 of the MOTUL Clubman’s Championship returned to the Zwartkops Raceway fielding a full grid of 35 cars in the seven-class Index-of-Performance Spring-leg of the championship.
Race 1, made up of both Modified Production Cars (MPC) and Super Saloon Cars (SSC), was determined by Saturday morning’s qualifying in cooler conditions:
Qualifying
Class D was extremely close
Dewald Brummer on 1.13.6 was on rails and the next 6 cars all in the 1.14.4 bracket including myself which made for extremely close racing .
Heat 1 was chaos as usual at the start and having had bad run of late into turn 2 and 5, I was focused on avoiding a side swipe or ramming up the rear after recently getting the car back from the panel shop … who are my new best friends. Having made it through lap 1 and 2 unscathed, I managed to settle into 4th place and at this point was happy to still have my car in one piece. I started to chase Giles Darroch and he was only a car or two in front of me in Class D . Supersaloons who are supposed to start at least 30 seconds behind us all of a sudden were in the mix which was upsetting the apple cart as these cars are much faster and simply steam roll over you if you don’t get out the way which makes racing these cars in this format extremely dangerous as no sooner had they passed me only to run straight into the back of Giles Darroch, sending him into the dirt and spinning a couple cars in turn 8 … yellow flag and pace car for 2 laps which then left a lap or two for racing with a number of cars passing each other under yellow … meant I finished around 3rd in Class.
Heat 2
Index Grid – I was well positioned for Heat 2 starting near the front.
Trying to find extra time I left it a bit late, adjusting the caber on the car 45 minutes before the next heat, which as we all know is recipe for trouble … don’t scratch if it’s not itchy …. Needless to say we ran out of time and managed to catch the back of the cars on the warm up lap meaning starting right at the back. Wow this was hard work and I managed to work my way through the field and ended up with 4th overall for the day and I pleased to report that we managed to come out the race with all the panels still in 1 piece!
Written by: Wayne Lebotschy
