First round of the South African Rotax Regional Championship hit it off at Vereeniging Laserfiche Kart Circuit on 09 February.
First up on the Programme in the Target Racing Team was the Rotax Micro category, in which they had Kent Swartz and Wian Boshoff. The two team mates have been practicing a lot together and will show a strong force this year as Wian qualified 2nd and Kent 4th.
Wian and Kent both had great starts in 2nd and 4th place. Boshoff had an unfortunate wheel off in turn 7 , which lead to the pack crowding him and he fell back.
Later on an unavoidable incident in front of Swartz caused him to swerve drastically and he ended up going off the track, both managed to pick up some places and ended 6th and 9th, posting 4th and 5th quickest times, meant they could start further up the order.
Kent Swartz was looking extremely strong in heat 3 where he stuck behind the leader for most of the race. Being sandwiched for most of the day where he had double tasks of focusing on the driver ahead as well as defending the one behind, Kent unfortunaly lost the second position and ended the heat in 3rd. Then an unfortunate Nose Cone penalty demoted him to 6th place of which he ended 6th overall for the day.
Next on the Line up was Taiibi Tucci, driving a Rotax Senior category for the first season, having driven very few races here and there in 2017 and 2018 , showed an impressive performance as he did his personal best times and closed the lap time gap to the leaders by posting 3rd to 5th quickest laptimes.
He had a day of gremlins attack him as the first heat he retired and in the warm up of the last heat, another driver’s chain snapped off and slashed right between his plug cap and plug wire to cause the kart to stop as there was no more spark. A gentleman fellow competitor who had retired in a similar area was very friendly and great respect earned as he helped Taiibi to recover and Taiibi took to continuing 3 laps down into the race.
This was short lived as he then realised his front tyre had a puncture caused from off roading and had to retire.
Definitely what one can take from this experience is, no matter how great you improve and all seems on track and perfect, in Motorsport so many variables are at stake and things can go horribly wrong in an instance. It is important to keep positive and working through the miss-haps towards the greater goal as one learns from these and matures to become a successful racing driver.
Troy Snyman and Ghazi Motlekar were next on the list. Troy Snyman has joined the Target Racing Team for 2019. Having raced a successful 2018 season in the Rotax Micro category, he is looking strong for the 2019 Rotax Mini Season.
Ghazi Motlekar competed at his first Regional in the Rotax Mini Category, only haven driven the Vereeniging track a few times end of 2018, Ghazi has been voted Target Racing Team’s most improved driver thus far for 2019.
“As Troy is based in the KZN province, testing with the new Target Racing addition is limited and the team has to work hard testing equipment etc in the short time available, but for sure as 2019 unfolds, we are bound to get stronger , ” Team boss Fabienne states.
Troy qualified an impressive Pole position and Ghazi posting his personal best in 6th.
Heat 1 was nail biting as Bjorn Berthold kept Troy on his toes, but managed to pull the win and Ghazi had a hard fought race to end in 7th, no longer pushing the field from behind and mixing it showing some great potential as he overtook other drivers in impressive overtaking moves. As he is still learning, an unfortunate Nose Cone penalty caught him out and demoted him to 9th
Some changes were made and Troy dominated heat 2 and 3 to make it three wins on the day.
Ghazi suffered a standing start for heat 3, none the less pushed his way to catch the field, beating his previous personal best laptimes from the morning to another personal best laptime, again very impressive overtaking moves and ended 8th.
The next round of the Rotax Regional Championship will be at Zwartkops International Kart Circuit on 02 March
Picture Credit – Werner Viet