The premier Bridgestone Production Car series had an action-packed afternoon at Cape Town’s Killarney circuit on September 27, and as the sun set both Johan Fourie and reigning champion Michael Stephen realised that the championship would go down to the wire – at Zwartkops on 1 November. Can Stephen make it an unprecedented four in a row, or can Fourie finally wrestle the title away from the Port Elizabeth engineer?
Graeme Nathan was feeling content too, though it was harder work – at least off the circuit.
A gearbox change between races was required to get the Volkswagen Genuine Parts Golf GTI back on the grid after a dominant sprint race win from pole position, and as the log leader he started the 12 lap feature race from the back of the grid. He fought through from the fourth row after a thrilling ding-dong with Ford’s Shaun Duminy (and others) to eventually finish second, despite an uncharacteristic off-road excursion at the end of the main straight.
That was enough to clinch yet another Class T title for the towering 45-year-old – and richly-deserved it was. You need to get up very early to beat Nathan and his band of merry men based at a busy little workshop in the shadow of Kyalami’s control tower…
Fourie – immensely popular with his home crowd – won the sprint race at a canter and had a car which barely needed touching between races. As the log leader he also started from the back of the grid in the feature race.
Class A was also a thriller with cars three abreast at times, as a half-dozen of SA’s top racers duked it out. There was some paint swopped along the way and once again Fourie’s main adversary as he progressed through the field was Simon Moss in the Engen Xtreme Audi S4, whose reputation as a hard man is firmly cemented after less than a season in the category. Needless to say, the only driver who gave Fourie easy passage was Gavin Cronje in the second Alcohol Killer BMW 335i, also playing hard but fair as he denied Stephen an easy ride to the front.
He too ended second – three seconds behind Stephen – to go to Zwartkops a month hence with an 11 point advantage.
The feature race was nothing like Fourie’s easy progress in the earlier seven-lap sprint, as a result of the first corner action which happened astern of his Alcohol Killer BMW 335i – the Engen Xtreme Audi S4 of Stephen and the Sasolracing version of Hennie Groenewald attempting looking to share the same piece of track. By the time they had got themselves disentangled Fourie was untouchable…
Their fracas concertinaed down to the class T cars behind, with Nathan leading the charge and Michael van Rooyen slotting in behind. Or that’s how it was supposed to be but all hell broke loose with Charl Smalberger punted Van Rooyen as he turned into Hoals Hoek, the Williams Hunt Cruze going broadside, and then spearing to the outside of the track – and onto a piece of tarmac now occupied by the luckless Lee Thompson in the Castrol Mini.
He was eliminated on the spot, while the Chevrolet limped to the pits and then re-joined, eventually classified sixth. The second green and red Mini of Mandla Mdakane had a quiet race by his recent standards, and he was fifth.
A post-meeting review of the incident between Groenewald and Stephen saw their positions reversed, Groenewald demoted to third and Stephen moved to second. It was the culmination of a tough weekend for the Sasolracing outfit, the highlight of which was a front-row start for Hennie, who had plugged away on his set-up all Friday to have the car perfect for Saturday morning’s qualifying session.
The second car blue and yellow Audi, piloted by Gennaro Bonafede, had his qualifying compromised by a slipping clutch, and the rest of the day was just not quite there – though the lean youngster was always in the thick of the action. Hennie experienced a gearbox niggle in the feature race to be classified last in class.
When all was said and done though, the ever-enthusiastic Killarney crowd was treated to hotly-contested doorhandle-to-doorhandle action, largely clean and fair. The wide grins in the post-race Parc Ferme was proof that the drivers felt the same way too. This was especially in T, where the Ford Racing Focus ST drivers, Shaun Duminy and Gary Formato (who both seemed to be on track for solid results until lady luck intervened) – were full of smiles after at least getting to do plenty of what they and the rest of the Bridgestone Production Car field came to Cape Town for – to race.
