By Dave Abrahams
Cape Town - It was the most destructive lightweight endurance race at the one-kilometre Killarney 'K' circuit in recent memory, a nine-hour demolition derby of crashes huge and small, seized engines and blow-ups that went on all day and into the night.
Yet thanks to some inspired McGyvering and rival teams unstintingly helping each other, 29 of the 40 starters were still running when the chequered flag came out to signal the end of the ASAP World 9 Hour on Saturday night. The organisers had taken advantage of the African Endurance 9 Hours for sports-cars being held simultaneously on the main circuit to run the annual 8 Hour for an extra hour, and to run under lights for the first time in the 33-year history of this race.
And the honours went to the team that had made this race its own, with three wins in the past four years - the The RST CBR150 of RST bikewear boss Jonny Towers, international Superstock rider David 'McFlash' McFadden and local teenage hotshot Kewyn Snyman. It was in fact the ninth time that the UK-based Towers, who has travelled to the Cape for this race each year for more than a decade, had been a member of the winning team.
The mayhem started before dawn as unseasonal rain soaked the circuit, leading to several heavy crashes in practice before the track dried out sufficiently for Superpole qualifying, in which McFlash put the RST CBR150 on pole, ahead of the similar machines of arch rivals VanBros and Mad Mac's, and Martin Paetzold's hand-built MPS80 two-stroke.
Within seconds of the traditional Le Mans start, however, two bikes went down in the third corner of the race - including Warren Guantario on the Mad Mac's CBR150 - while international racer AJ Venter on the Gauteng-based Coast Busters CBR150 and Aran van Niekerk on the VanBros machine chased after McFadden.
Three laps in, 600 Challenge champion Hayden Jonas seized the MPS80's 79cc KTM motocross engine; Paetzold, however, went home to fetch a spare piston, cleaned up the damaged barrel and rebuilt the engine - all in less than two hours!
The bike ran perfectly for the rest of the day in the hands of Paetzold and British Superbike star Hudson Kennaugh. They rejoined just before the second hour was up, 129 laps behind the leaders, losing no more than 16 laps in seven hours to the RST express and finishing an honourable 25th.
By the end of the first hour McFadden and Towers had reeled off 70 laps, one more than the international Team PS CBR150 of Brent Harran, Mathew Scholtz, Bjorn Estment and Dutch Superstock rider Wayne Tessels. Astonishingly, Mad Mac's were back up to third, just two laps adrift and on the same lap as Team PS.
A few minutes later Erin Lane's Factory Lane CBR150 self-destructed. Her father hastily pulled a well-worn engine from a spare bike and the bike was running again within an hour- but that was just the beginning.
Half an hour later the Bosson Performance Exhausts CBR150 of all-girl team Martie Bosson, Jeanette Kok-Kritzinger, Carmen Agnew and major-league endurance racer Daphne Lang from Gauteng was forced into the pits with a broken inner clutch basket. Lane immediately offered the clutch from his daughter's original engine and the Bosson crew got the bike running again in little more than an hour.
RACE-WINNING CONSISTENCY
The second hour demonstrated RST's race-winning consistency, with another 70 laps completed, three more than Mad Mac's - who had passed the Coast Busters for second - and at least five ahead of everybody else.
At one-third distance Towers, McFadden and Snyman were still circulating like clockwork, with 209 laps to their credit, with Team PS only five laps adrift, while Mad Mac's had lost five laps due to a lightning pit stop to replace a handle-bar bent in the first-lap crash, which had since worked loose.
Four hours and another 70 laps in, RST held a six lap advantage over Team PS with the Mad Macs CBR150 just two laps further adrift, having made up a lap on the international riders.
Then, 12 minutes into the fifth hour, Kok-Kritzinger crashed the Bosson machine on the back straight and wound up lying face-down on the track, the bike on its side a few metres away with its rear wheel gently spinning.
Moments later Willem Louw came off the Honda CBR150 he shared withPierre de Proft, Arie Korf and Ronaldo Frutoso on the start-finish straight. Brandon Storey, flat out behind him on the Factory Lane machine, had nowhere to go and T-boned the fallen bike, totally destroying both machines.
Within seconds the safety bike was out and medics were attending to the riders, but it was about 20 minutes before the last of the debris was cleared, Kok-Kritzinger and Louw had been ambulanced to hospital and racing could be resumed.
LEARNING 'ON THE JOB'
By that time the Bosson CBR150 had been repaired and Lang was circulating again, but when her 35 minutes were up neither Bosson nor Agnew was ready to ride so Lane, now without a bike, was drafted in Kok-Kritzinger's stead. That's not as simple as it sounds; all the Bosson riders learned to ride on street bikes while Lane, at 14 years old, had never ridden a motorcycle with a conventional shift pattern and had to learn 'on the job'.
Prolonged cruising behind the safety bike reduced the fifth hour to only 60 laps, with the RST machine on 339 after five hours, eight laps ahead of team PS with Mad Mac's two laps further down, having lost a lap in the pits tightening a loose foot-peg - another legacy of that first-lap fall.
Midway through the sixth hour Lane was out again on the Bosson bike when a faster rider dived inside her on the S bend after the 180's through a gap that Lane said simply wasn't there. The resulting crash was relatively minor and Lang was out on the circuit in a matter of minutes, but Lane was furious at what she regarded as dangerous riding.
By two-thirds distance RST had posted 406 laps, Team PS were on 399 and Mad Mac's on 397, while the Greased Lightning squad of Dorren Loureiro, Anthony Shelly and Powersport rider Andrew Liebenberg had quietly moved up to fourth on 380, with the veterans' team of Jimmy Pantony, Gerrit Visser Sr, John Craig (who had ridden in every edition of this race since its inception in 1983!) and Paul Medell fifth, two laps further down.
GRINDING OUT THE LAPS
As the shadows lengthened in the seventh hour the leading teams concentrated on grinding out the laps. RST posted a full 70 tours, running at the same pace as in Hour One, putting another two laps on Team PS and Mad Mac's, while Greased Lightning held steady in fourth and the Weskus Verkoelers CBR150 of David and Michael Ellis and Calvin Wiltshire demoted the Veterans to sixth.
By now the floodlights were on and all the bikes were running with lights, but the pace was as hot as ever, with the top riders still lapping in less than 50 seconds. Six minutes into the eighth hour, however, Team PS went out with engine failure after a superb ride, promoting Mad Mac's to second.
Four minutes later Lane was skittled again, this time in the slow Golf Club corner, and was hit by another machine before she could get up, injuring her right elbow. The Bosson machine was hurriedly pushed back to the pits, but it would have needed a new front brake master cylinder, a new seat and a lot of detail work to get it running again.
The team was also down to only one active rider, so Martie Bosson reluctantly decided that enough was enough, and retired the battered machine and its exhausted crew.
With an hour to go it was pitch dark, but the pace had dropped by less than two seconds a lap; the RST riders reeled off an incredible 68 laps during the eighth hour, stretching their lead to 13 laps over Mad Mac's, Greased Lightning and Weskus Verkoelers, each of which completed 67 tours.
McFadden and Towers took the last two stints on the RST CBR150, completing another 68 laps between them to bring the total to 613, at an average of 52.8 seconds a lap including pit stops. Trevor Westman brought the Mad Mac's machine home on 599, with Greased Lightning a distant third on 582. Weskus Verkoelers completed 60 laps in the final hour to finish fourth on 569, while the Veterans suffered a broken earth wire to the battery early in the ninth hour and posted only 50 laps, which dropped them to 10th overall.
34 FINISHERS
Although only 29 bikes took the flag, 34 were classified as finishers, having completed more than 50 percent of the number of laps posted by the winners - including the indomitable ladies of Bosson Performance Exhausts.
IOL