The racing included a National historic race meeting comprising of all the classes while the Porsche Challenge, Formula Libre and Lotus Challenge also engaged in some frantic racing, the classic and historic motorbikes parade rounded out the trip down memory lane. The field was the largest ever in South Africa with 303 cars taking part in the racing.
“Spectator attendance at the WesBank Raceway was 22 000 and we had cars queuing down the road and all the way back on to the highway, when we filled our 6 000 parking bays we then began to park cars at the Rand Airport and run a shuttle service from the airport to the Raceway and it was very successful,” said marketing director Jan Johnson.
The action on the track hotted up as the day wore on with a few upsets and a few regular winners dicing their way to the top of the leader board, in the Formula Libre category current championship leader Fernando dos Santos (#32 Dos Santos Racing) again dominated in chalking up his win. The Lotus Challenge racing was won by Kevin Bassett (#92 Team Bassett) who took both heats while the Historic Fine Cars racing saw Emmerentia’s Simon Taylor (#20 Team Taylor) finish first And in the D.K Porsche Challenge 924 Johan Beukes (#34 Johan Beukes Racing) and Tim Mes (#16 Team Mes) in the unlimited class ran away from their respective fields to win.
The historic touring cars class A – D saw a closely run first race with some famous names taking part but in the end it was Johan van Veelen (# 128 Martini Racing) who took a hard won victory in class A, class B saw Francois Pretorius (#21 Pretorius Racing) win, Robin Forbes (#171 Forbes Racing) and Norman Poulter (#113 Le Poul Racing) won classes C and D. In class E Harry Lombard (# 32 AB Backworks) and his faithful beetle came up trumps in both heats against a classy field while F saw Bernard Spolander ( #88 Team Spolander) in first place and in a surprise result in class G Shannon Theobald (#75 Theobald Racing) defeated championship leader Peter Collings (#41 Collings Racing).
A day of exciting circuit racing came to an end at the prize giving when a number of special prizes were awarded to Driver of the day, to the first crash at WesBank Raceway and many others.
The next event at WesBank Raceway is the Illegal to Legal Street Drag Championships on 3 August.
The next Circuit race meeting takes place on 6 September.