Those of you who are regular visitors to the Creation website will already know about Stuart Mack and Ian Smith (no relation to our Engineer 'Smiffy'), who for Le Mans, formed our South African 'strong arm' of the team. The two SA guys brought their own unique style and sense of humour with them and they are welcome back with us any time. As it happens, they know a thing or two about racing, Ian runs his own team (www.revolutionracing.co.za) and Stuart is Cheif mechanic.

The pair run Shelby Can-Am Sports Cars, a premier championship in SA, using one-make race cars which used to be run in the USA originally and were exported to SA and raced in the then-known Vodacom Sports Prototype Series or VSP a few years past. Two years ago the name was changed to Shelby Can-Am and the series has grown from strength to strength. The series is at National recognised level so there is a National Champion every season. Here, Stuart gives us a report on their race exploits.

Life after LeMans by Stuart Mack

After our week with Creation Sport at Le Mans Ian and I got back to the business of working on “our” 4 Shelby Can-Am’s. Luckily we had done a lot of work before Le Mans so the cars where pretty much ready to race when we got back. The racing in SA sees official practice and qualifying on the Friday, a short warm up on Saturday morning and two sprint races during the day.

Because of my recent leave of absence (I have a day job as well!) I could not get leave for the Friday and Ian had to hold down the fort. We were down to 3 cars very early on Friday as the newly rebuilt motor on Clare Vale’s car decided to blow its air box off causing damage deep within the motor. Karl Zachau’s car had a gearbox gremlin that was quickly fixed by Ian.

Qualifying went well with Darryn Lobb taking pole for both heats, and Neil Lobb did a good job (considering his broken left wrist), putting his car 3rd on the grid. Karl was 9th, 1.8s off the pole time.

All 3 cars did the morning warm up, Karl and Neil reported no problem, but Darryn complained about the car jumping out of second gear. We opened the box and found that the second dog gear was very worn, a new one was installed and the box bolted back together.

Heat 1 went pretty much as planned, Darryn led from the lights and never looked back, narrowly winning from the hard charging Ruan Pretorius, Neil took a comfortable 3rd. Karl’s car developed a misfire for 5 laps, then it suddenly cleared. He finished 12th

The misfire in Karl’s car was traced to a faulty plug on a coil connector. This was fixed and all 3 cars sent out for heat 2. On the warm up lap the misfire reappeared but with no time to fix it on the grid and the race been too short to warrant a mid race pit stop, Karl would have to live with it.

Darryn’s car bogged down on the rolling start and Ruan and Neil got a run on him, then all hell broke loose. From the pit lane all we saw was tyre smoke then lots of dust. When the dust cleared, Neil and Ruan’s cars were deep in the gravel trap on the outside of turn 1 and Darryn’s car had stopped further round the track. Neil’s car was badly damaged and the driver a bit banged up, but ok. The alternator on Darryn’s car had gone pop leaving the car dead in the water. Once the carnage had been cleared and the safety car pulled in, the remaining 3 laps went on without incident, Karl brought his sick sounding ride home 10th.

With just 3 weeks to the next race it’s all hands on deck to fix the cars. Neil’s car is the most badly damaged and has already been stripped down to a chassis to start the rebuild.

The next round of the Shelby Can-Am championship takes place in 3 weeks time at the legendary East London Grand Prix circuit. This is the track where the highest top speeds (270km/h) are reached and Ian and I will see if they have learnt anything about high speed sports prototypes from their week in Le Mans with Creation.