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SAFV: Cape Town round seven preview
Championship Battle Hotting Up The South African National Formula Vee Championship battle, moves to Cape Town, for the seventh round of the 2005 Championship season to be run at Killarney, on Saturday the 13th August 2005. The event ...
Published: Aug 10, 2005, 4:12 PM
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Championship Battle Hotting Up
The South African National Formula Vee Championship battle, moves to Cape Town, for the seventh round of the 2005 Championship season to be run at Killarney, on Saturday the 13th August 2005. The event includes races for Tiger Wheel & Tyre Superbikes, Classic Motor Cycles, Barnetts Auto Spares Clubmans Cars. Glopin Super Cars, Powerflow GTi Challenge, Sports and GT Cars and Paarl Motors Classic Cars. Racing gets underway at 10h30 with the two National Championship Formula Vee races, scheduled for 11h45 and 15h40.
At the head of the Championship log, the battle is really starting to simmer, with a mere six points separating reigning Champion Symm Grobler (No1 Auto Mecca Rhema 2) and challenger Alan Holm (No2 JBS Lasersprint Rhema 2). Both are veterans of more than ten years of Formula Vee racing and both have been top contenders for a number of years, with forty three year old Grobler finally clinching his first National Title last year. Could 2005 be Holm's year? For the twenty nine year old bachelor from Alberton, south of Johannesburg, this is his last chance to achieve the feat, before his thirtieth birthday.
The Cape Town race will however, not be a two horse race and a number of other drivers are capable of upsetting the apple cart and taking the victory. Holm's JBS Lasersprint team mate Jaco Schriks (No4 Rhema 2), has tasted victory twice, after a slow start to the season and is hungry for more, while teenage Karter Andre Van Der Merwe (No72 Acc Air-conditioning Rhema 2) is still looking for that elusive first win. If he manages to achieve this in Cape Town, he would become the sixth race winner of the year. Another contender for a race win in Cape Town is ex Champion Peter Hills (Car No5) who makes a welcome return to the category, in a brand new Vacuform Rhema 2, built to replace the Rhema he wrote off at WesBank Raceway, when the steering wheel came off and he hit the wall.
Formula Vee racing is a mixture of experience, verses the exuberance of youth and three more teenagers, from the Karting ranks, will be keen to show some of the more experienced competitors, what they are capable of at Killarney. They are Kyle Bennett (No16 Rhema), Laurent Calkoen (No66 Autoquip Mail & Guardian Vision), and Trevor Bland (No14 AC DC Dynamics Rhema). Up against them, will be the experience of Jannie Geyser (No20 Vision) and the more experienced, of the local Cape Town based competitors, Doug MacDonald (No11 Rhema), Chris Danks (No23 Stalcor Rhema 2) and Romanie Smithdorf (No24 Lantis.
Making their first trip to Killarney, will be Gareth Jackson (No21 JBS Lasersprint Sting) and Bobby Nel (No25 DK Office Furniture Lantis), while local drivers like John MacDonald (No41 Lantis), Nian Du Toit (No42 Lantis), Calvin Beekman (No44 Panasonic Laser) Michael Sydenham (Car No61), Warren Hardenberg (Car No71) and Jaco Lambert (No110 Lantis), among others, will be joining the regular National Championship contenders, for the event. Some Cape Town based Formula GTi and Formula Ford Kent drivers, that compete with the Formula Vees in the local Formula Libre series, have also secured Formula Vee drives for the weekend, with Steven Schemel, Paul Simon, Louis Basson and Ashfaak Dawood all hoping to make their National Formula Vee debuts, at the event.
As usual, the category should produce close competitive racing, all the way down the field and baring a wet circuit, the Killarney Formula Vee lap record looks set to tumble.
<pre> National Championship Points:
1 Symm Grobler 136 2 Alan Holm 130 3 Andre Van Der Merwe 111 4 Jaco Schriks 72 5 Jannie Geyser 66 6 Anthony Taylor 57 7 Kyle Bennett 52 8 Laurent Calkoen 49 9 Dennis Johns 48 10 Peter Hills 31 11 Chris Danks 31 12 Trevor Bland 30
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