The first round of the Historic Tour visited the popular Zwartkops Raceway outside Pretoria on 4 March 2017. With a bunch of new competitors joining the Historic Racing South Africa club this year the day promised to be a good one.
Historic Racing – Round 01 – 4 March 2017 – Zwartkops Raceway
The largest contingent of newcomers could be seen in the newly branded Historic Pursuit Racing (Marque Cars). Boasting with a new sponsor in the form of Charlies SuperSpar they sure looked the part on the day.
The Historic Saloons classes also showed up in big numbers and a few new faces and exquisite new historic saloons. This year the cut-off requirement will be Saloon Cars introduced before 31 December 1979. This allows for some more cars that qualify to be raced in these Historic Saloon car classes.
With a whole host of new sponsors on-board for the 2017 season the stage was set for Historic Tour to kick off with a bang.
The second round of the Red Square Kawasaki ZX-10R Masters Cup 2017 Championship season delivered very fast paced action right from the start. Joining the first round of the Extreme Festival on Human Rights day, a public holiday, promised to be a special day. And so it was with a great spectator turnout and action aplenty for all.
Red Square Kawasaki ZX-10R Masters Cup – Round 2 – 21 March 2017 – Zwartkops Raceway
A few surprises saw a much faster Gareth Bezuidenhout in his rookie year in the club challenging for the lead and overall championship and new found pace from Jaco Gous joining that challenge. The club also welcomed two new racers, Mmusapelo Seate and Greg Whyte, to the fold.
Qualifying
The first welcome surprise for the day saw season newcomer Gareth Bezuidenhout putting his bike on pole in qualifying. He was followed by Graeme van Breda and Sven Grune locking out the front row of the grid in third. Jaco Gous qualified in fourth and Teddy Brooke would line up alongside him in fifth position. Brian Bontekoning would line up in sixth completing the top six qualifiers.
Unfortunately Superpole got cancelled due to the track being cleaned after an oil spillage during qualifying for the racecar categories.
The Bridgestone BMW Club Racing Series made their way to the popular Red Star Raceway on Saturday 11 March for the second round of the 2017 Inland Championship.
Bridgestone BMW Club Racing Series – Round 2 – Red Star Raceway – 2017-03-11
Qualifying
Lorenzo Gualtieri (E36 328i Turbo) highlighted his return to the fray by grabbing pole position in his first ever class A race. Desmond Bloem (E36 M3 Turbo) would line up alongside him on the front row with cousins Dino Fameliaris (E36 M3 Turbo) and Julian Fameliaris (E36 328i Turbo) right behind the leaders. Paulo Loureiro (E36 M3 GTS) and Jorge Estrela (E36 328i Turbo) made a welcome return to class B by locking out the third row of the grid.
