Two major factors are coming into play during the Saturday afternoon qualifying sessions for King of the Hill – the first being the competitors pushing much harder and exploring the absolute limits of the 1.9 km Simola Hill course, all while the ambient and track temperatures begin falling rapidly as the sun starts its descent behind the Simola hills.
Robert Wolk dominated the second qualifying session in the Gould GR55B, setting his fastest official time yet of 36.140 seconds as the team refines the setup of this car on its first outing in South Africa.
Reghard Roets is edging closer to the Modified Saloon Car record, powering the Nissan R35 GT-R to a time of 38.613 seconds – 0.2 quicker than his best qualifying run last year, and less than half a second off Franco Scribante’s current record of 38.129 seconds from 2022.
Dawie Joubert was just a fraction of a second adrift in the Lotus Exige (39.592 seconds) – however this is still 1.3 seconds off his winning time from last year. Charl Joubert was a mere tenth of a second slower than his brother, while Johan Kristoffersson cut another 0.2 sec off his time in the all-electric Volkswagen Polo R1Xe WRX car (40.157 seconds).
Byron Mitchell was sixth overall and second fastest among the single-seater cars with a time of 40.504 seconds in the Reynard Formula VW.
As expected, Clint Weston remains the fastest of the standard road cars in the Mercedes-AMG GT 63 SE E Performance, setting a time of 43.483 seconds in Q2 – three-tenths faster than Q1.
