Cape Town – It’s not often that a championship goes down to the last lap of the last race of the season, particularly when the two contenders do not compete directly against each other.
But that’s what happened in the final round of the Mike Hopkins Regional Powersport series at Killarney on Saturday, as Chris Williams, who rides the DEA ER650 in the closer-to-standard Powersport B class, edged out series star Warren ‘Starfish’ Guantario (Calberg ER6), who’d been the man to beat all season in the faster Powersport A category, to take the 2014 title by the slimmest of margins.
Williams went into the last round leading by six points and all he needed to win the championship was a win and a second in class – even if Guantario won both races outright.
Which was where it got really interesting, placing the outcome of the series in the hands of Pragma ER650 rider Mike van Rensburg, the only rider to offer a realistic challenge to Williams for the Class B points.
And then Jonny Towers, CEO of bikewear brand RST, who was out from Britain for the annual RST 8 Hours endurance race for lightweight bikes on the one-kilometre ‘K’ circuit, entered a Class A Kawasaki ER6-f for the final round of the Powersport series, which meant that overall wins for Guantario were no longer a formality.
Nevertheless, the Starfish threw down the gauntlet with a 1m19.605s qualifying lap, nearly a second d quicker than Towers, and more than a second ahead of veteran David Bolding, out for the day on his vintage Suzuki Katana ‘Big Bertha’.
Van Rensburg and Williams were the next two qualifiers, but each got a poor start when the lights went out for Race 1, finishing lap one in seventh and eighth respectively, while Gauntario went straight into a lead which was never to be challenged as he romped away to win by five seconds from Towers and Bolding.
JP Friederich (Calberg SV650) came home fourth after a lively dice with Tim Clark’s 1986 Suzuki GSX-R750 but, less than a second behind them, Van Rensburg got the better of an epic race-long duel with Williams by 0.824sec to take Class B honours.
RACE 2 – THE FINAL SHOWDOWN
That meant Williams had to win his class in the second race to take the title – but Towers unexpectedly stirred the pot with a perfect start that put him in the lead over Guantario, Clark and Bolding, with Williams and Van Rensburg once more down in seventh and eighth respectively, this time with Williams ahead.
The battle for the outright lead was a scorcher, with Towers and Gunatario swoping places on almost every lap, never more than a couple of bike-lengths apart, but it was Towers who was in front when it counted, by just 0.252sec.
Thirteen seconds later Bolding led home Clark and Friederich, while Williams got the best of what had become a three-way battle for the Class B win with Van Rensburg and Paul Medell (Cape Bike Travel SV650) that saw all three finish within 0.185sec after the dice of the day.
It also made Williams the 2014 Regional Powersport champion, in a David versus Goliath scenario that will not happen again, since the modified Class A machines will make way for a single Powersport specification in 2015.