As per the wishes from the Joubert family, the remainder of the 2025 Simola Hillclimb is being staged in tribute to Pieter Joubert who sadly passed away this morning after a high-speed accident resulting from a mechanical failure on his Lotus.
This resulted in the fourth qualifying session being cancelled. In Q5, Pieter Zeelie made a significant leap forward, having posted a time of 38.303 seconds in the day’s warm-up session, then blitzing the course with an astonishing time of 37.553 seconds – the unofficial fastest-ever time for a tin-top car at the Simola Hillclimb in his highly tuned Toyota MR2 Super GT. However, only results from the Class Finals and Top 10 Shootout count for the official records.
WRX superstar Johan Kristoffersson continued his progress, dipping below the 40-second mark for the first time in qualifying at 39.481 seconds – six-tenths faster than his quickest run on Saturday in the all-electric Volkswagen Polo RX1e.
Franco Scribante and his team have been working hard developing a completely new suspension set-up for his mightily powerful Nissan R35 GT-R in order to cope with the bumps at the top of the main straight where he has broken gearboxes on several occasions previously due to the hard impacts. Unfortunately with the reduced runs he is still struggling to regain the pace, and ended Q5 on 39.828 seconds – just under 0.2 slower than his best from yesterday and still 1.7 sec off the record he set in 2022. Silvio Scribante was fourth in the session on 41.542 seconds (Audi RS3).
Robert Wolk has retired from the event after the newly acquired Gould GR55B was sidelined with an electronic sensor failure. Accordingly, Byron Mitchell was the top single-seater contender in Q5 on 41.741 in his Formula VW – albeit 1.5 seconds slower than Saturday. Rick Morris was second on 46.406 seconds in the Formula Ford, ahead of Klayden Cole Ensor-Smith (47.830 sec) in the exciting new MSA4 single-seater that made its debut as South Africa’s premier single-seater formula at Kyalami in March. His time was 0.7 sec faster than yesterday.
The battle in the standard road car category continues intensifying, with Clint Weston still holding the advantage in his Mercedes-AMG GT 63 SE E Performance. He posted a time of 44.090 seconds in Q5, just 0.2 sec ahead of Cristiano Verolini in the BMW M4 Competition – but both drivers went several tenths quicker in the cooler conditions of Q3 on Saturday afternoon. Courtney Nicholl remained third fastest on 45.517 seconds (Mercedes-AMG C63 SE E Performance).
