South African Kelvin van der Linde, who at 17 is one of the youngest drivers in the international VW Scirocco-R Cup competition, currently leads the title race as the series heads to the final round in Hockenheim, Germany, on October 19.
Van der Linde is the reigning South African Volkswagen Cup champion and has shown his skills by dominating the Germany-based series so far with four wins earning 290 points in the process. 60 points are up for grabs at the final and Van der Linde’s closest competition is Dane Kasper Jensen who sits on 247 points. Which means that Van der Linde only needs to finish the season’s last race in 12th position to win the world’s only single-make championship powered by natural gas.
Kasper took the lead in the two-race penultimate round in Oschersleben this past Sunday when mid-race Van der Linde received a drive-through penalty after race officials deemed that he had pushed another competitor. However, after the race the video footage was reviewed and it showed that the other car had spun in front of Van der Linde and that contact was unintentional.
Van der Linde: “At the beginning of Saturday’s race I tried to attack Kasper. But then I took a conservative approach to the whole thing and stopped taking risks. After all, what I really want is to win the championship and it’s looking very positive on that front.
“Absolutely everything went wrong in Sunday’s race. I wanted to play it safe because of the Cup title. Then I came into contact with another car and got the drive-through penalty. All in all, I was too cautious and didn’t take enough risks. I’ll come back stronger in Hockenheim – I want to claim this title.”
Let’s hope our proudly South African export will take this Volkswagen-backed series and open many more doors to an international racing career.
