Cape Town – The eighth round of the Mike Hopkins Regional Motorcycle series, run on 11 October at Killarney in perfect spring weather, delivered some of the closest racing yet seen in this championship, along with drama worthy of a soap opera and even the occasional flash of comedy.
In the cool of the morning, while the circuit was still clean, defending champion Ronald ‘The Red Baron’ Slamet put the Mike Hopkins ZX-10R on pole with an electrifying 1m11.570s qualifying lap, half a second quicker than similarly mounted Malcolm Rapson and 1.5sec better than Trevor Westman’s seven-year-old Ocean Sizzler R1.
Heading the second row of the grid was teenager Hayden Jonas, just 73 days after breaking his left hand in a domestic accident, and intent on reclaiming the lead in the 600 Challenge from Andre Calvert and the KC Transport ZX-6R.
When the lights turned for Race 1, however, the front row dived into Turn 1 line abreast, jostling for position, which wasn’t resolved until they came out of Turn 4 on to the back straight. Slamet pulled a small but crucial gap, which he gradually translated into a nine-second lead at the chequered flag with a superbly focused ride.
But Westman - his bike giving away at least 20kW to the state-of-the-art Kawasaki - held on to Rapson and outbraked him into Turn 5, setting off a battle with the faster machine that was to go right down to the line.
The two swopped places on almost every lap, Westman riding the wheels off the old Yamaha and posting a career best lap of 1m12.856 on lap two, until Rapson got caught behind two back markers on the final and came home 0.184sec behind him.
Born-again racer Hilton Redlinghuys was fourth on the Thruxton ZX-10R and Jonas a lonely fifth, well ahead of Quintin Ebden’s BMW S1000RR which, by its phenomenal straight-line speed, had frustrated every effort by Calvert to get by and take the fight to Jonas.
Mark van den Berg (Wicked Tuning CBR1000RR) held off an on-form Jacques Brits (Lize Signs S1000RR) for Class B honours, but not many people noticed, because 20 seconds behind them, veteran Mike Wilhelmi (Stunt SA ZX-10R) got into a ding-dong with young gun Wessel Kruger – on a big, clumsy but very fast Kawasaki ZX-12R sports-tourer - for 13th overall that saw them trading paint on almost every corner for the whole race and ended with an elated Kruger in front by half a second.
Jacques Ackermann took Class C honours, nine seconds ahead of a dice for second in class between Bronte Heinrich (Ducati 996) and Keagan Smith’s Kawasaki ZX-6R – with Heinrich just 0.010sec ahead when it counted.
RACE 2
Redlinghuys fell in the double-apex Turn 4 on the warm-up, comprehensively trashing the Thruxton ZX-10R before the second race could get underway, but Westman got a flyer down the outside and firmly shut the door on Slamet and Rapson going into Turn 1.
That didn’t stop Slamet, however, who powered away down the back straight into a lead that was never to be challenged, coming home almost 10 seconds clear of another no-holds-barred street-fight between Rapson and Westman, that went Rapson’s way by a quarter of a second.
Jonas and Calvert left Ebden for dead at the start, but Calvert still had no answer for the 16-year-old ‘Kamikaze Kid’, coming in four seconds adrift; they were fourth and fifth overall respectively.
Fifteen seconds later, Ebden, Van den Berg, David Bolding (PJ One ZX-10R), Brits, and Van den Berg’s son Alex (Wicked Tuning CBR600) all finished within 1.2 seconds of each other after a thrilling five-way dice for sixth overall, while Wilhelmi and Kruger reprised their earlier duel, finishing in that order just 0.105sec apart.
POWERSPORT
Arch-rivals and championship leaders Warren ‘Starfish’ Guantario (Calberg ER6) and Graeme Green (Thruxton ER6F) decided to make life a little more interesting by starting from pit lane – which meant that at the end of lap one Tim Clark was leading on the classic Suzuki GSX-R750 (which is older than he is!) from JP Friedrich’s Calberg SV650 and Mike van Rensburg on the Pragma ER650, while the top qualifiers sliced through the field (they were eighth and ninth after just one lap).
By lap four normal service had been resumed, with Guantario leading from Green; Friedrich relegated Clark to fourth on the same lap but could not close the gap to the leaders – even after Green’s bike developed symptoms of fuel starvation and slowed, coming in nearly five seconds behind Guantario.
The two leaders were tested for noise after the race and Guantario was asked to silence his Kawasaki by 2dB – which had a small but significant effect on its power output, although he didn’t know it at the time.
RACE 2
Green suspected that his bike’s fuel filter was blocked and simply replaced the entire fuel-tank with that of Jonny Towers’ RST ER6 (Towers is based in the UK and did not enter Round 8). This time Green and Guantario elected to start from the back of the grid – and in fact made a leisurely getaway after Friedrich and Clark had led the rest of the field into Turn 1.
After that it was Game On, as they moved up to seventh and 10th respectively by the end of lap one (Guantario’s restrictive exhaust made a noticeable difference when he got caught in traffic. Nevertheless, they were fourth and sixth a lap later, and Green hit the front on lap three.
It took Guantario until three laps from home to reel him in, and in fact he led at the end of lap six, but Green pressed home his slight advantage to re-take the lead on lap seven and come home just 0.138sec ahead, with Friedrich, Clark and Chris Williams (DEA ER650) rounding out the top five.