Cape Town – Former National champion Graeme van Breda romped away with both Kawasaki ZX-10R Masters Cup one-make races for riders older than 35 at the weekend’s Extreme Festival national race meeting at Killarney.
Behind him, however, a battle royal broke out in Race 1 as Gerald van Heerden, Kyle Robinson, Sanjiv Singh, Sven Grune, Pieter de Vos, Johan le Roux and Jaco Gous fought it out for second, swopping places on every lap and eventually finishing in that order within little more than three seconds.
Van Heerden battled braking gremlins in Race 2 and dropped back in the closing stages, leaving Robinson to come home a solid second, seven seconds ahead of a race-long four-way fight for third between Singh, De Vos, Gous and Le Roux that had the commentators shouting themselves hoarse and saw them finish in that order within less than two seconds.
Van Heerden’s hard-earned ninth in Race 2 was enough to give him the overall honours for the day in Class B for riders older than 43 while 52-year-old De Vos, riding the wheels off an older bike significantly down on power compared to the rest of the field, not only won Class C for riders older than 51 but also finished third overall for the day behind Van Breda and Robinson.
Thunderbikes
National contender Nicholas Grobler (Yamaha R1) dominated the first Thunderbike race, winning Race1 by almost four seconds from international star David ‘McFlash’ McFadden, out for the first time on a three-year-old BMW S1000 RR he’d bought during the week.
But that was only after Trevor Westman on the Mad Mac’s ZX-10R, who had been all over Grobler for the first four laps, went off the outside of Jaguar Sweep on lap five, motocrossed over the molehills (missing the tyre wall by a hand’s-breadth) and rejoined in sixth!
Daryn Upton (Yamaha R1), Dean Vos (Kawasaki ZX-10R) and Gareth Davidson (Yamaha R1) rounded out the top five.
Race 2
Vos got a cracker of a start in Race 2 to lead the field into the first turn but by the end of lap one normal service had been resumed with Grobler leading from Vos, Upton and McFadden, while Westman got muscled down the order to sixth.
On lap four, however, Grobler’s bike went sick and Upton went to the front ahead of Grobler, McFadden, and Westman, who had already disposed of Davidson and Vos in his attempts to get back on terms with the leaders.
Those efforts were rewarded three laps later when Grobler and McFadden both retired, the latter with a broken gear lever, gifting Westman with an unchallenged second-place finish, well ahead of Vos, Davidson and local teen Alex van den Berg (Kawasaki ZX-6R) who was also the first 600 rider home in both races.
He also made up one of two father-and-son teams in the race, along with his father Mark (Honda CBR 1000 RR SP) and ASAP World duo Karl and Jared Schultz, each on a Kawasaki ZX-6R.