The 2023 South African Endurance Series visited the Red Star Raceway near Delmas last Saturday (29 April), with the Autumn Trophy providing great team performances, strategy and driving skill.
Endurance series results
The three-hour race, round two of the series, was won overall by the BBR team, with their Porsche 911 GT3 driven by Hein and Henk Lategan, plus Verissimo Taveras.
Second, on the same lap as the winners, was the Stradale Porsche 911 GT3 of Charl Arangies and Arnold Neveling.
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Filling out the podium, two laps adrift, was the seven-litre Chevrolet Backdraft roadster of Mike McLoughlin and Steve Clark, while Dolphin Engineering’s Byron Mitchell and Peter van der Spuy brought their Nissan-powered Juno home in fourth place.
Brilliantly, the fifth place overall and saloon car victory went to the factory Volkswagen Motorsport Polo GTI of Daniel Rowe and veteran Graeme Nathan.
“It was about being consistent. We figured out what lap time would serve us best in terms of tyre wear and fuel usage, went out and simply clicked off laps at that time throughout,” Nathan said.
As the race went on, the SupaPolo gradually crept up the leader board, to finally finish fifth and win Class D.
Class E and sixth place overall was taken by Andrew Horne and Gerarld Buys in their Xena Chemicals Nash MVW, beating a phalanx of Backdraft Cobras in the category. More importantly, the Nash crew won the coveted Index of Performance category.
Lady racer Karah Hill and Jurie Swart finished seventh in their Kalex Volkswagen SupaPolo, closely followed by the Pple Group Porsche 924 of Phillip Meyer, Mark Harvey and Dean Wolson.
60 minutes of GT magic
The morning’s opening one-hour South African GT race was led from start to finish by Michael Stephen in the Ultimate Outlaw team’s Audi R8 LMS.
He was chased to the line by Aldo Scribante (Scruderia Scribante Lamborghini Huracan), Roelf du Plessis (Ultimate Outlaws McLaren MP4-12C), Paul Hill (Kalex Aston Martin Vantage) and Andrew Culbert (Bigfoot Express Mercedes-AMG GT).
Race two, held in conjunction with the first hour of the endurance event, saw Silvio Scribante (Cemza Cement Lamborghinin Huracan) reverse the order, winning 35 seconds ahead of Stephen.
Third was Aldo Scribante ahead of Du Plesssis, Marius Jackson (MJR Audi A8 LMS) and Culbert.
Marius Jacobs (AAA Recovery Opel Tigra Spaceframe) won both the Silvercup races from Karel Stols (Rotrix Mazda RX-7) and Fred Kruger (JDM Tuning Honda CRX).
Next race
The next round of this year’s South African Endurance Championship will be held at the Free State Phakisa circuit on Saturday, 1 July .
