Winter racing at Cape Town’s Killarney circuit presents unique challenges for the Superbike brigade. The track is usually streaming wet from overnight rain in the morning, making a lottery out of qualifying, dry with wet patches (some of them right on the racing line!) for Race 1 and bone dry (albeit too cold to get their super-sticky tyres up to operating temperature) in the afternoon.
All of which adds up to exciting, unpredictable racing for those fans who brave the chilly wind, and sometimes unexpected changes of fortune for riders able to read the conditions just right.
The 2013 Mike Hopkins Motorcycles Regional series is rapidly evolving into a two-horse race, with points leader Ronald Slamet (Mike Hopkins ZX-10R) and Aran van Niekerk (Stunt SA/DMR ZX-10R) going toe to toe in every race so far this year. After four of nine rounds nobody else has won a race and former champion Malcolm Rapson’s lone second place was due to Van Niekerk’s DNF at the May meeting.
600 CHALLENGE
Expect this battle of the giants to continue on Saturday, whatever the weather, with Rapson, on the Donford ZX-10R, and on-form Gerrit Visser (Competition Bikes CBR1000RR) debating third, under severe pressure from the top 600 Challenge contenders – particularly Van Niekerk’s younger brother Nicholas van der Walt (DMR CBR600), Brandon Haupt on the MX Clean GSX-R600 and the fast but erratic Sharl Wasserfall, on the Berlux ZX-6R.
Class B will be decided between class leader Kashief Mohammed (Honda CBR1000RR) Leroy Malan’s similar Honda and the Fast Fence ZX-10R of veteran Mike Wilhelmi, who is enjoying the best season of his career.
In the absence of Ian Willis’ Triumph Daytona 675 R, Class C will be a straight fight between Vossie Vosloo on the Competition Bikes R1 (opinions are divided as to whether it goes faster since being sprayed bright orange or whether it just looks faster!) and the quietly consistent Wayne Arendse (Honda CBR600RR).
CLASSICS/POWERSPORTS
With veteran Carl Liebenberg out of the running (he broke a femur in practice at the June meeting) the red-hot Powersport 650 Class looks set to be a three-way battle between Warren “Starfish” Guantario, who is entered on the Calberg ER-6, former National racer Graeme Green, back after an absence of several years and already up to race-winning pace on a Suzuki SV650, and teenager Hayden Jonas, also on an SV650, with Trevor Westman as the dark horse in Gautario’s SV650.
John ‘Konstabel’ Kosterman can be expected to lay down the law his Suzuki GSX-R750 Pre-Sling in the Vintage Class, while Mandy Peake will, as usual, make a slow start on her Fast by Fran VTR1000 (thanks to that model’s notoriously snatchy clutch) and then embarrass a number of macho Clubman Class racers by passing them when they least expect it.