Cape Town – Round five of the Mike Hopkins Regionals at Killarney had all the ingredients for successful theatre – drama, comedy, even a touch of farce.
And defending champion Ronald ‘the Red Baron’ Slamet provided all three when he crashed on his first hot lap in qualifying; not only did he qualify 11th, but he also did a lot of damage to the Mike Hopkins ZX-10R - and when they got the bike back to the pits, the key was missing!
A frantic search at the Race Base workshop turned up the bike’s spare key, and tuner Franki Breedt finished the rebuild with minutes to spare.
Meanwhile World Superstock rider David ‘McFlash’ McFadden had put the Stunt SA ZX-10R on pole with a 1m11.380s lap, nearly a second quicker than Trevor Westman (Mad Mac’s ZX-10R) and Malcolm Rapson’s family-funded Kawasaki ZX-10R.
RACE 1
Nobody got near McFadden in Race 1 either, although 600 Challenge star Hayden Jonas on the ASAP World ZX-6R pulled a brilliant start to stay with him for half a lap, and was still second at the end of lap one. A lap later, however, he was fourth, as Slamet and Westman - who had sliced through the top half of the field in less than two laps - powered past on the back straight.
Former champion Rapson came through on lap three, although Jonas chased him all the way home to finish a close fifth, by far the best of the 600s.
Brandon Haupt was a lonely sixth on the MX Clean ZX-10R, 10 seconds clear of a four-way battle for seventh between David Bolding (PJ One ZX-10R), Quintin Ebden – out for the first time on the PrintIt R1 – Leroy Malan’s Calberg ZX-10R, Slovakian rider Sandra Stammova (battling gear selection problems on her new BMW S1000 RR) and top Class B finisher Alex van der Berg (Wicked Tuning ZX-6R), which saw them finish in that order in less than six seconds.
The battle for Class C honours was even closer, with Greg Warner (Honda CBR600RR), Class B tail-ender Jannie Stander (Kawasaki ZX-10R) and Jacques Botha (Suzuki GSX-R600) coming home well inside three seconds.
RACE 2
Westman got his best start yet on the Kawasaki to lead the field into Turn 1, but by the end of lap one McFlash was back in command, while Slamet was already up to fifth behind Andre Calvert (out for the first time on the new KC Transport ZX-10R) and Haupt.
McFadden romped away to win by four seconds, posting the fastest lap of the day (1m11.097s) two laps from the end, while Slamet outbraked Westman into Turn 5 on the same lap to grab second, while Rapson defended fourth from Calvert, Haupt and Jonas, all of whom finished within two seconds after a four-way thriller.
Fifteen seconds later, however, Bolding got the best of the dice of the day, a race-long five-way epic that saw him swopping places on almost every lap with John Oliver (Glass It R6), Stammova, Ebden, Keagan Smith (VanBros ZX-6R) and Van der Berg - all of whom crossed the line within just two seconds.
POWERSPORTS
RST bikewear CEO Jonny Towers had flown out from Britain with the stated intention of giving Powersport star Warren ‘Starfish’ Guantario a hard time - and promptly put the RST ER6 where his mouth was by qualifying it on pole, ahead of Gauntario’s Calberg ER6 and the Monster Plumbing ER6 of hot rookie Kewyn Snyman.
Race 1 was a real grudge match as Towers and Guantario dominated proceedings, carving each other up in every corner and lapping everybody up to 16th. It was a back marker, in fact, that sealed Towers’ fate, as he hung back rather than dive through on the inside of Turn 4 on the final lap.
That gave Guantario a half-second advantage that he was able to hold until the flag. JP Freiderich was the best of the rest, ahead of a titanic battle for third between Snyman, Chris Williams (DEA ER6) and Mike van Rensburg (MVR ER6) that saw them finish almost line abreast in less than three tenths of a second.
RACE 2
Towers and Guantario broke away at the start of the second Powersport/Classics race, with Freiderich, Van Rensburg and Snyman disputing third. Towers held the advantage until lap four; the two swopped places twice in the next lap, but Guantario was ahead as the two dived past backmarkers into Turn 5.
Then it all went pear-shaped as Towers lost the front and went tumbling into the dirt, leaving Guantario to come home alone, 11 seconds ahead of Freiderich, with Van Rensburg and Snyman just 0.132s apart in the battle for third.
BREAKFAST RUN
Fadil Kadir (Yamaha R1) and Shawn Payne (Suzuki GSX-R600) battled it out all the way in Race 1, finishing only 0.36s apart after swapping places on almost every lap, with Kadir in front when it counted.
Beauty therapist Lynne von Buddenbrock put up a superb showing in her first ever motorcycle race, finishing seventh after a dreadful start - only to discover that a stone had punctured the radiator of her Honda CBR600 .
ASAP World team principal Karl Schultz was sufficiently impressed by her performance, however, to offer her the team’s spare bike for Race 2 - even though she had never ridden a machine with a racing gear-change, which is upside-down compared to that of a road bike.
Kadir and Payne set the early pace in Race 2, but were soon joined by Abdul-Kader Dalwai (Suzuki GSX-R600) and Jacques Smith (Yamaha R1). Dalwai and Smith found some extra pace in the closing stages to finish well clear of the field, but Dalwai was penalised 30 seconds for a technical infringement, dropping him out of the reckoning and handing the win to Smith, from Payne and Kadir.
Von Buddenbrock adapted well enough to a bike she’d never seen before - let alone ridden - to lap less than a second slower than on her own bike, finishing sixth, and sixth overall for the day.