Lobb on top at Kyalami
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Reigning Execuline Shelby Can-Am champion Darryn Lobb started his title defence with a show of pace and level-headed maturity as he nursed his car home in the second event to win both races on the day. Qualifying was on Friday and Lobb (DK Woodcraft) claimed pole position, edging out Rui Campos (Hugo Boss) by just 3/10ths of a second. Chris Hart (Hi-Q Plettenberg Bay) headed the second row ahead of veteran Alan Eve as Dave Beattie (BACE) and Craig Shorter (Hollard) filled the top six. Lobb got the jump on the field at the start and immediately eked out a bit of a gap over the squabbling pack. But his advantage came to nought as the pace car was deployed after two laps when Shorter ended his race against the barrier at Nashua corner having lost a fight for the same piece of tar with Brian Algar (Firedart). There was more drama at the restart when Hart lost his bodywork in the ultra fast sweeps after the start. Fortunately he was able to keep it on the track, but bits and pieces of shredded fibreglass gave the marshals quite a bit of hurried work to do before the field arrived again. On lap five Campos disappeared from the fray, which took the pressure off Lobb and it was Eve who slotted into second, but on the penultimate lap Beattie passed him to snatch the runner-up slot. Sean Greve claimed fourth in the Vulcania Reinforcing car ahead of impressive newcomer Thomas Reib (Intertrans) while Algar rounded off the top six despite having lost second gear. “It wasn’t too bad considering we use second gear six times on each lap,” he said afterwards. Jennifer Murray was out of luck in the Execuline entry when she suffered a broken throttle cable on the warm-up lap, and lost a number of laps while it was repaired, but once back on the track she posted some impressive lap times. An innovation in the class this year is that the first eight grid positions for Race 2 are reversed from the first race finishing positions based on their best lap times in Race 1. Big loser here was Dave Beattie, whose fastest lap in Race 1 saw him relegated to eighth on the class grid for Race 2. Surprisingly, Darren Lobb, despite having won Race 1, had only the eighth fastest lap in Race1, and this catapulted him to pole position in class for Race 2. Race two, run over 12 laps together with the Unlimited Porsche class, was a brilliant spectacle as Lobb, Campos, Beattie, Murray, Eve, Reib, Algar and Greve fought hard for the win. Lobb was hobbled slightly with an overheating engine yet still managed to hold on for the win. “I was short shifting and keeping an eye on the temperature gauge,” he explained. Campos was the most spectacular driver, but a cracked wheel rim saw him retire after seven laps. Beattie, despite the handicap of starting eighth in class, drove brilliantly to make up six positions and finish runner-up once again. Jennifer Murray, starting second in class by virtue of the new grid rule, drove consistently to finish third in class. Still missing a few gears, Algar dropped off the pace to finish fourth, while Hart put in a storming drive to claim fifth after starting from the back of the grid of 35 entries, and Greve rounded off the top six positions in class. The two Durbanite newcomers Sun Moodley (Bigfoot Express) and Bryant van der Merwe (ChemSpec), as well as local newcomer Hanno Pengilly acquitted themselves very well by staying on the black stuff and out of trouble, and all scoring points on their circuit racing debuts. Excitingly, the Execuline Shelbys have been invited to take part in the A1 GP event in Durban on 23rd-24th of February as a support race. Their next event in the National series will be at Port Elizabeth on the 8th of March. |