Cape Town – Spring may have been only a day or two away, but the first Power Series event presented by Wingfield Motors to be run at Killarney International Raceway since lockdown was held in distinctly wintry weather. Qualifying was run in heavy rain, putting the more powerful cars and motorcycles at a disadvantage and producing some unexpected grid positions.

Brennon Green put the Weskaap Bakwerke Golf 5 on pole for the first Mikes Place Clubmans Saloons race, ahead of Danie van Niekerk’s Wingfield Motors 325 E36, Bruce Meyer’s VW Polo GTi and the LVTS E46 of Rafiek Pather. Van Niekerk, however, missed Race 1 due to a mechanical problem, leaving Green and Pather to fight it out for line honours in treacherous conditions on the streaming wet circuit.
Brennon came home just 2.436 seconds ahead of Pather’s big BMW, with Class B contender Abduraouf Jacobs, better known at Killarney as Baby Jakes, third overall and first in class. Fourth, and leading Class C, was Meyer’s privateer Polo. Class D honours (and ninth overall) went to Noel Stander in a VW Polo. There were no Class E runners and Grant Fourie (VW Golf Mk1) was the first Class F finisher in 19th overall.
Race 2 was run on a (mostly) dry track; Van Niekerk was back with a point to prove and led every lap to finish almost six seconds clear of Green, with Wayne Wilson (DTM Helderberg Maxima) a further eight seconds back (and leading Class B) after a superb dice with Mansoor Parker in the Executive Decisions M5 and Baby Jakes. Willem Swart (WFS Motors Jetta) took Class C honours in sixth overall, Class D went to Shane Smith (Truckport Logistics E46) in 11th overall.
Ciara van Niekerk (who’d missed Race 1 with clutch problems on her Wingfield Motors Golf Mk1) aced Class F after a hard-fought drive, less than two seconds ahead of Fourie, with Class X newbie Keanu Venter (Young Guns Plumbing Golf Mk1) sandwiched between them!
Green come off the line like a man on a mission in Race 3, leading Van Niekerk and Parker on the opening lap. After that Van Niekerk dropped back but Parker wasn’t about to give the race to the giant-killing Golf without a fight. He chased Green all the way to the line, showing him a wheel at least once a lap, and actually led the penultimate lap only to be mugged on the final tour, finishing just 0.420sec adrift after a thriller of a race.
Pather was third, less than five seconds further back, well ahead of Van Niekerk, with Wilson topping Class B in fifth, while Class D winner Smith caused a bit of an upset by finishing eighth, 1.444 seconds ahead of Swart, who took Class C honours in ninth overall. Ciara van Niekerk got a terrible start and was 22nd after lap one but fought back to a hard-earned 17th overall, first in Class F.
Marco Busi qualified on pole for the Cheaper Cars GTi Challenge in his Automan Polo, ahead of Colin Meder (International Tube Tech Polo) and Jurie “Umpie” Swart’s Alpine Autohaus Polo 6.
Meder grabbed the lead on lap one but had to give way to Busi on the second time around, and soon came under fire from Swart in third. The Alpine Autohaus hotshot was only half a second behind Meder when Carel van der Merwe parked his VW Golf 2L in a very exposed position on the exit from Kfm Corner and brought out the red flags.
The restart was even more hard-fought with Swart and Meder all over Busi until Meder dropped out on the second-last lap, leaving Swart to chase Busi home, 1.724 seconds adrift at the line. Eden Thompson (VW Golf Mk1) was third overall and first in Class B, with Jason Coetzee (CK Coachworks Golf GTi) topping Class C in fourth overall.
Race 2 delivered the dice of the day as Swart and Busi, in Meder’s absence, went at it from the off. For most of the race they were side by side all the way round, neither willing to give a centimetre, until Swart got a wheel ahead on lap seven and eked out a tenuous lead to finish less than half a second ahead, with Mario Roux in the Automan Jetta 2L a distant third. Jacques Geldenhuys (G&A Motorsport Polo) just held on to an early advantage to take Class B (and fourth overall) by a scant 0.099sec from Thompson, while Dario Busi aced Class C in eighth overall.

It was a measure of how wet the circuit was that the top three Powersport 300 riders qualified ahead of the quickest of the Powersport 650s, as Slade van Niekerk (Prestige/GT Graphics R3), Jason Linaker (RST/Samurai Ninja 300) and David Lindemann (Fueled Racing/GM Contractors R3) annexed the front row of the grid. And that’s where the excitement was in Race 1 too, as Van Niekerk and Lindemann got into a race-long superb battle for the lead, never more than a bike length apart. In the end, however, Van Niekerk was able to hold the Fueled Racing rider off, coming home less than half a second ahead, with Linaker third and Edward Rolstone (Kawasaki ER650) a distant fourth on the first of the bigger, more powerful machines.
Superbike star Trevor Westman was able to use the power of the Rockstar/AWR ER650 to good effect on a drying track in Race 2, pulling out a commanding lead and finishing 22 seconds ahead of the field. Behind him, however, the battle between Van Niekerk and Linaker for Powersport 300 honours was even closer in Race 1, as they swopped places on almost every lap, to finish just 0.199sec apart with Van Niekerk in front when it counted.
Lindemann came home fourth, ahead of veteran Andrew Thompson (MHM Thruxton Motorcycles ER650), while Nicholas Hutchings (HSC RC390) passed Samurai RC390 rider Lance Jonas (father of multiple Regional Champion Hayden Jonas) on the final lap to take sixth overall and fourth in class by the narrowest margin of the day, a scant 0.038sec.
The circuit was almost completely dry for Race 3, delivering a more conventional finishing order with the 650s of Westman, Franco Flach (Kawasaki ER650) and Thompson finishing in that order after Flach, who was fifth on lap one, mounted an impressive mid-race charge. Behind them Van Niekerk, Lindemann and Linaker finished in that order, covered by 5.028 seconds.
Class S hotshots Andrew Rackstraw (Formula VW Reynard) and Dee-Jay Booysen (Dico/Bidvest McCarthy Reynard) qualified on the front row in Formula Libre, but Booysen had a disappointing run in Race 1, finishing a distant third behind Rackstraw and Byron Mitchell’s Dolphin Engineering Formula VW. Richard Carr was fourth overall and first in Class C in his Formula Vee Rhema 6, while Graham Knight (Eloff Transformers Ray 1.6L) finished sixth in the lone Class B entry and Damian White, the only Class A runner, came home 10th in his draKen Racing Formula GTI Ray.
Whatever ailed Booysen’s Reynard couldn’t be cured for Race 2 as he trailed home third, way behind Mitchell and Rackstraw, who finished in that order, 1.169 seconds apart after a splendid chase. Carr headed Class C again in fourth, followed by White and Knight.
Steve Humble put his Opel-powered Ravenol/Harp Motorsport Mallock Mk14B on pole in Sports & GT qualifying, just ahead of Josh Broome’s Rico Barlow Racing/Spitfire Furniture Radical SR8 – but it was Ryan Buda and the Fatsak Porsche GT3 Cup who made all the running in Race 1, romping home to win by 20 seconds while Humble and Paul Beachy Head (Audi R8) disputed second in Broome’s absence.
Broome was back for Race 2, however. He and Humble got into a superb dice for the lead until the Mallock made expensive noises crossing the line at the end of lap five and coasted to a stop on the Kfm Corner escape road. That left Broome to cruise home 47 seconds ahead of Nian du Toit in his brand new rotary-engined Locost Lotus 7 and Buda’s Porsche – the only three cars to finish on the lead lap.

ENDS
Issued by Killarney International Raceway on behalf of the Western Province Motor Club.