Saturday’s instalment of the Sahara Production Car Championship at Kyalami will host the biggest entry of any meeting in this year’s Vodacom Power Tour. Veteran Steve Wyndham will campaign a 110 kW Ford Fiesta ST for the first time and former Ford pilot Clint Weston will join the Class T fray in a Mini Cooper S.
Saturday’s instalment of the Sahara Production Car Championship at Kyalami will host the biggest entry of any meeting at this year’s Vodacom Power Tour. Veteran Steve Wyndham will campaign a 110 kW Ford Fiesta ST for the first time and former Ford pilot Clint Weston will join the Class T fray in a Mini Cooper S.
The Steve Wyndham Racing team has built a new Ford Fiesta ST for class B of the series. The team hopes that the three-door 2,0-litre Duratec engined Fiesta will offer the right balance of weight, handling and power (110 kW and 190 N.m of torque). Although the car’s power output is still significantly lower than that of the opposition, Cape Town-based Wyndham is confident that its lighter base weight will give the Fiesta a competitive edge.
Following the recent withdrawal from the team by former team driver Clint Weston, who has moved across to the works Mini team, Wyndham will be behind the wheel of the Fiesta.
“It came a huge surprise to us when Clint notified me recently of his intention to leave the team,” said Wyndham. “We were banking on him to drive the Fiesta, but I will now take over for the Kyalami race at least. We have decided to finally put the old Falcon on pension, so I am ready to go in the new car.
“We have not had much time to test the car. Although we had it on the track for a few laps early last week, we had booked two days at Killarney in Cape Town for testing, but it rained for most of the time so we lost valuable track time. We also found that our brand new, very expensive, shock absorbers were leaking oil after less than ten laps of running, so hopefully they will be repaired by the agent before Saturday’s race,” Wyndham added.
With Weston’s departure from the team, Wyndham has seconded 18-year old Shane Williams to drive the Murray and Roberts Foundry / DigiDoor Ford Ikon in Class C. Williams has been racing in the Volkswagen Cup this season, but is familiar with the Ikon having raced a privateer version last season.
Meanwhile, Weston will join the Class T field in a second Castrol Mini Cooper S for the remainder of the 2005 season.
“Another car, with a driver as accomplished as Clint, will certainly add to the spectacle for the rest of this year,” said Castrol Mini motorsport manager, Danie Human. “Clint will give Shaun (Van der Linde) some championship support in this exciting class.”
After a season-long battle in Class T (for Production Cars with forced-induction engines), Martin Steyn (Bosal Cooper S) leads Van der Linde in the championship standings. Steyn earned maximum points at Zwartkops last month after a first-race incident caused Van der Linde to retire with a puncture. However, the latter clinched a runaway victory in the second round of the race meeting.
