Cape Town – It’s all hands on deck for the ninth round of the Mike Hopkins Regional Motorcycle series at Killarney this weekend.
All the main players have entered, setting up some intriguing one-on-one battles throughout a field of more than 40 entries in seven classes. The big focus, however, will be at the sharp end of the Superbike field, where defending champion Ronald Slamet, riding the Mike Hopkins ZX-10R, will face former champion Malcolm Rapson - also ZX-10R mounted, and on superb form throughout this season – “wild child” Trevor Westman, doing amazing things on the seven-year-old Ocean Sizzler R1, and young gun Gerrit Visser, on a family-sponsered ZX-10R, whose red hear belies one of the coolest brains in Regional Superbike racing.
600 CHALLENGE
Mixing it with the litre-class machines will be the only two 600s in Class A, the ZX-6Rs of Hayden Jonas, who recently celebrated his 16th birthday by passing his road licence for a 125cc machine, and Andre Calvert, showing creditable grace under pressure this season from the more flamboyant Jonas. One of them will win the 600 Challenge this season; don’t ask us to predict which one.
At the top of Class B are Jacques Brits (Lize Signs S1000 RR) Alex van den Berg (Wicked Tuning CBR600) and Wessel Kruger on the Motorcycles and Bits R1. The absence of Van Den Berg’s father Mark, who has promoted himself into Class A, has rendered this class even more unpredictable than usual; expect fireworks.
Class C will be fought out between the usual suspects - Jacques Ackermann (Yamaha R1), Australian Bronte Heinrich (Ducati 996S) and Wayne Arendse (Honda CBR600RR).
POWERSPORT/CLUBMANS
Race fans can look forward to another clash of the titans in the Powersport class as championship rivals Warren “Starfish” Guantario (Calberg ER6) and Graeme Green (Thruxton ER6F) take up where they left off.
In their previous encounter they took a race each, although the winning margin in the second leg was just 0.138sec. Expect the racing to be even closer this weekend.