Cape Town – Despite threatening weather, the third round of the Mike Hopkins regional motorcycle series at Killarney delivered some of the most exciting racing seen in years.
Young gun Brandon Haupt and veteran Malcolm Rapson, on similar Kawasaki ZX-10Rs, put up a superb duel for the lead in each of the two Superbike races, chased all the way in both cases by 600 Challenge hero Hayden Jonas on the Fifty8 Racing ZX-6R, who actually led off the start of the second race 2 and showed the litre-class leaders a wheel more than once during an epic Race 2.
Race 1, however, belonged to Haupt and Rapson, who swopped the lead at least once on every lap before Haupt pulled the pin on lap seven and opened up a 1.5 second lead in the final two laps.
Jonas was third, 6.6 seconds further adrift, while Aran van Niekerk, in his first outing of the season, was fourth on a borrowed Ducati. It was the first time Van Niekerk had raced one of the iconic Italian machines, which he described as ‘very different and very hard work’. John Oliver on the Glass It R6 and Leroy Malan (LM Racing Zx-10R) took class B honours.
Race 2
The second outing was even closer, as Jonas kept pace with the big bikes off the line down to Turn 1, outbraked them and closed the door on them to lead the field up to Turn 2. Haupt and Rapson powered past on the back straight but they were unable to break away from the smaller machine.
As they battled for the lead, swopping places on almost every lap, Jonas kept outbraking both the bigger bikes into every corner, closing right up to them and on several occasions showing whoever was in second at the time a wheel – once he even tried to go round the outside of Rapson in the notoriously bumpy, downhill Turn 3.
Again Haupt eased away in the last two laps to win by 1.4 seconds - but this time Jonas was only 0.683s behind Rapson. Ten seconds later, Alex van den Berg (Liquid Blast ZX-6R) caught 600 Challenge rival Warren Guantario (Mad Mac’s ZX-6R) on the line to take fourth overall and second in class by 0.007s.
Leroy Malan (Milu Logistics R1) and Karl Schultz (ASAP World ZX-6R) topped Class B.
Breakfast Run
Terry Murtz on a Suzuki GSX-R1000 was the class of the class in the Breakfast Run, leading every lap of both races and winning Race 1 by almost 15 seconds, while Shamier Alexander (Yamaha R1) and Garth Scholtz (Aprilia RSV4) did their best to keep him honest.
Race 2 was much closer, even though Murtz’s best lap was 0.7sec better than his earlier mark. Donavan Lawrence (Yamaha R1) and Simon Augustyn (BMW S1000RR) stayed in touch the whole way, finishing seven and nine seconds adrift respectively.