Generally speaking, there’s no rational explanation for waking up at quarter to four in the morning…unless your house is on fire or you’re an avid fan of New Zealand Club Rugby, your schedule for quarter to four in the morning should be clear. But here we are, standing in a hangar at Upington airport, staring at some of the best reasons to disrupt one’s circadian rhythm.It’s that time of year when all of the CAR team’s thoughts turn to performance…last year, we assembled an impressive array of machinery that covered the gamut from hot superminis, such as the Fiesta ST, through to the likes of the Porsche 911 Turbo. The talented young racing duo of Stephen Simpson and Gugu Zulu piloted these cars around Cape Town’s Killarney circuit. It was an awesome event, but every great achievement has to be topped and this year’s Performance Shootout had to be something extraordinary.
So, after much frenzied phoning, organising and scrambling, the ingredients for this year’s Performance Shootout were in place. A total of 13 of the most performance-focused cars on the planet totalling more than R30 million, with a combined power output of more than 4 500 kW, an empty airfield in Upington and local racing legend, Sarel van der Merwe, to take the helm…the Sarel and the Supercars feature has taken shape.
The stars of this awesome feature read like a car enthusiast’s idea of Nirvana: the über-saloon duo of the Audi RS4 and BMW M3, the stunning Audi R8, the hardcore Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera, a brace of potent Porsches in the shape of the 911 GT3 RS and 911 Turbo Tiptronic, super coupes – the Merc CL65 AMG and M6, retro-flavoured rocket in the shape of the CAV GT, a pair of awesome Astons – the DB9 Coupé and Vantage V8 Roadster, as well as incredible exotics that have never before graced South African soil, such as the Spyker C8 Spyder and the Pagani Zonda C12 S.
The cobwebs from the unearthly wake up are soon blown away by an assortment of V8s, V10s and V12s waking up with a throaty snarl here and a rumbling exhaust note there. With the stunning low-light photography out of the way, the stifling heat of a summer’s day in the Northern Cape throws an amazing veil of heat haze across the runway. It’s an incredible visual trick, but what really stands out is the silence…no birds, no traffic, just the roar of blood in the ears. It’s this bizarre state of selective sensory deprivation that makes the appearance of one car in particular something that I struggle to translate into words…so bear with me.
It’s the otherworldly sound that first finds me. Like a distant whine mixed in with a hard-edged mechanical rasp, and for now that’s all there is – a vast expanse of sun soaked runway and this sound. Something disrupts the torrent of heat haze, but is barely perceptible against its shimmering surface. Then it begins to take on an angular, low-slung shape as the sound saturates everything. Skimming across the haze is the Zonda at full chat. Your sense of hearing tells you that this car is travelling at a serious pace, but the vast tracts of clear sky and open ground conspire to make it look as though it’s travelling in slow motion. The Zonda remains in this almost dreamlike state only for a few seconds before materialising sharply into view as it screams past our position in a rush of baked air and mechanical soundtrack.
This is just one of the gathered performers waiting to prove its supercar status in the uninterrupted environment where these machines excel. Can anything match the brutal assault on the senses and the startling performance that the Zonda embodies? You’ll have to take in CARtoday.com’s incredible Sarel and the Supercars feature on CARtoday.com until the January issue of CAR Magazine hits the shelves on December 17 to find out.
