The second qualifying round was a bit of a mixed bag, with Byron Mitchell setting the fastest time of 41.302 sec in the Formula VW car.
Andre Bezuidenhout’s team got the Gould GR55 running again, suspecting that the car’s cut-off switch was knocked down by the force of the impact when it hit the bumps between turns 2 and 3 particularly hard during the first run on slick tyres. He switched out the slick tyres for intermediate rubber in Q2 and posted a time of 41.420 sec, four seconds off his best practice time.
Wolk didn’t go out for Q2, as there was an electronic crank sensor fault on the Infinity engine which, interestingly, is paired with a four-speed gearbox on the 1989 Pillbeam that makes it a real challenging machine to drive. The team is working on the balance of the car as it’s bottoming out a lot in the corners. Andrew Schofield set a time of 43.208 sec, his best run yet in the Formula Renault V6.
Among the tin-top contenders, Franco Scribante and Reghard Roets chose not to go out in the cooler conditions, with Wade van Zummeren snatching the opportunity to shine in his all-new custom-built tubular spaceframe rear-wheel drive Nissan GT-R. His time of 42.996 sec was nearly 2 sec faster than Q1 with a characteristically wild ride.
Rui Campos used the muscle of his Ford V8-powered Shelby Can-Am sports prototype car to set his fastest time so far at 43.007 seconds.
JP van der Walt still leads the road car category in the 2016 Porsche 911 Turbo S on 45.626 sec, 0.2 sec quicker than his winning time last year in a 911 GT3 RS. He’s also 1.2 seconds quicker than Gordon Nicholson in the 2017 Audi R8 V10 Plus.
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Release compiled by Colin Mileman (082-897-6145 colin@milemanmedia.co.za)
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