EAST LONDON CALLING…BPC READY FOR THE NEXT CLASH
The Bridgestone Super Production Car Championship arrives in East London for Round Four of the championship after a two month break, but for some it has been a period of intense research and development – rather than a rest. With the category last visiting the circuit in September 2011, the weekend of July 4/5 is going to be a re-learning process for most driver/car combinations, and will in fact be the first time that the BMW F30s have raced at South Africa’s one-time Grand Prix circuit…
In accordance with the 2014 rules, the review of performance parameters took place after the third race, so the playing field for the rest of the season is now set. These decisions were achieved after extensive analysis of overall performance and the findings are that Class A remains completely unchanged thanks to the close and exciting racing so far.
Class T on the other hand has been revised in the interest of closer competition and improved reliability. The size of the intake restrictor has been reduced by a millimetre across the board and there are small downward boost revisions for the Ford Focus ST and MINI Cooper S, and the cars are now down to around 230 kW – not too far off the 220 kW target set by the controllers at the beginning of the year.
It remains to be seen whether these developments will dramatically alter things, and the key to the ongoing success of Graeme Nathan (the most successful driver in the history on Bridgestone Production Cars, with four class T championships and two runner-up slots in six years) is consistency. From six starts this year he has had a brace of wins, seconds and thirds, and takes the VW Genuine Parts Golf GTI to the Border region with a 12 point advantage.
While it is Michael van Rooyen in the Williams Hunt Chevrolet who is chasing – showing good pace and scoring consistently so far this this season – Gary Formato is the danger man.
After Nathan the Focus pilot is also the most successful class T driver in the series, and Formato has two championships (2009 and 2011) to his name. Last year was the first time in six years that he finished outside the top three, and by his high standards it was a frustrating year as the team battled to develop the new, four-cylinder ST.
They seem to have put that behind them and with three victories he is the ‘winningest’ driver in the class so far this year, and that bodes well for East London. At the last round he managed a rare full-house, winning both races, scoring three extra points for pole position, and setting the fastest lap in each race to take two bonus points. His team-mate Shaun Duminy is also starting to find his ‘mojo’ again, though his season to date has been marred by an accident-induced DNF, and an exclusion for exceeding the boost level.
The Castrol MINIs remain fast, and the team is confident that the Autumn break has helped to solve gearbox issues which sometimes made life in the pits frenetic for the ADF crew. A mix of experience (Lee Thompson) and youth (in the form of 20-year-old BPC newcomer Mandla Mdakane) could be a good one, too.
In class A, Michael Stephen remains the man to beat. With three championships in succession (2011, 2012 and 2013) and a trio of championship bronze medals before that, he is a model of consistency. His black Engen Audi S4 is omnipresent, and his uncanny knack of being in a position to score well is his stock-in-trade. He is the only driver to have taken more than one win so far this year, and that says it all. His young charger of a team-mate, Simon Moss, couldn’t have a better role model, and it can only be a matter of time before the results come.
Best of the rest is Johan Fourie, who has been solid year-to-date and comes off the back of a morale-boosting win in PE. The long, fast straight at East London should suit the Alcohol Killer BMWs, and he must fancy his chances for a good points haul, as will his teammate Gavin Cronje. A more talented duo you won’t find, and Fourie was champion in 2008 and 2009 but he hasn’t been able to replicate that form for BMW. Cronje is a guy who’s fast in anything, but even he has found it a challenge to drive a class A car right on the limit, all of the time, in his first season.
The Sasol Audi A4s, arguably the best turned-out race cars in the land – period – have seen their two drivers sharing the spoils with the result that they are third and fourth in the championship. Gennaro Bonafede is ahead, and his ability to wring speed out of the car on a single lap is undisputed but would be further up the order if he could find a way of breaking clear of the pack. The second car of Hennie Groenewald was looking good in the opening round at Zwartkops on 1 March, but Killarney a month later was unspectacular and culminated in an engine failure in the important feature race at PE.
East London motorsport enthusiasts, starved of the fastest production-based saloons in the land since 2011, can look forward to two races: a sprint of 8 laps and a feature race of 12 laps. With cool mid-year temperatures and some 325kW underfoot in the case of the class A cars, top speeds approaching 250 km/h look likely…
The country’s fastest and most picturesque circuit and the country’s quickest tin-tops piloted by the best racers…it sounds like a match made in heaven.
Roadworx Communications