Cape Town – Round four of the Mike Hopkins Regional motorcycle series will be run at Killarney on Saturday – but that’s where the resemblance to a normal race-day ends.
Because this weekend the races will be run anticlockwise - in the opposite way to the usual direction - which means competitors will face an entirely new circuit.
There is an enduring Killarney legend that when Edgar Hoal laid out the circuit he intended that it should be raced anticlockwise, and that the direction was later reversed, but nobody has ever come up with a reason why.
Certainly, on my first visit to Killarney in 1962, the races were run clockwise, as we know the circuit today – although there were a lot more gum trees and, I am told by former competitors, less bumps.
There have been a few anticlockwise race meetings since then, and all the riders who have taken part agree that the circuit is totally different when ridden that way. It has one right and four left-hand corners, so both tyre wear patterns and suspension settings are different, while the circuit’s small but significant elevation changes play a much bigger role than usual.
At the end of a much longer start-finish straight, there’s a nasty little right-left switchback (the disused motorcycle chicane is re-inserted to keep riders away from the drag-strip wall) followed a by dizzy downhill run to tight, banked left-hander.
Then it’s ‘full taps’ up a long, slightly offset slope to the double-apex Malmesbury – riders will have to figure out for themselves where those apexes are – in which fortune will favour the brave as the fastest riders brake deep into the circuit’s most difficult corner.
Exciting racing
The bumpy, uphill Damp’s Dip will favour short-circuit graduates, as will the fast-entry Quarry - which will lend itself to ballsy overtaking moves - as Half-Main meetings are regularly run anticlockwise around this section of the circuit.
Finally there’s an intimidating downhill section to the track’s only right-hander and a very short, slightly uphill run to the start-finish line.
Most of the circuit will be completely new to even the most experienced riders, so the advantage will lie with those riders who are able to learn a new circuit quickly, rather than those who are quickest on ‘home turf’, and with those whose crews are adept at setting up a bike’s suspension without baselines to work from.
While this would seem to favour the more professional outfits, with experience of racing elsewhere, every time a race meeting is run anticlockwise at Killarney it delivers a bunch of surprises, from seat-of-the-pants riders who don’t overthink their riding technique and just go for it, delivering somewhat inconsistent lap times and very exciting racing.
But it’s also very unpredictable - to find out who these gonzo riders are, you’re going to have to be there.