Poulter second overall in season finale
Leeroy Poulter (Nissan Dealer Team/GP Windscreens Nissan 350Z) showed his class in a wet race two in the final round of the Bridgestone Production Car Championship at a wet Kyalami on Saturday, finishing second and taking second overall for the day.
Despite his best efforts he was unable to improve on the fourth place in the class A championship he took with him into the season finale. The overall honours went to Johan Fourie (Audi A4 quattro) with a total of 115 points, the defending champion failing to score in the opening race and finishing third in the last of the season's 18 races. Second, by a single point, was 2005 national champion Anthony Taylor (BMW 330i), who was second in race one and fifth in race two. Third was Michael Stephen (Audi A4 quattro) with 103 points, three ahead of Poulter.
Team-mate Marco da Cunha (Nissan Dealer Team/Tubular Nissan 350Z) finished the season in eighth place after finishing fourth in race one and retiring from race two when his windscreen misted up in the wet and humid Highveld summer conditions.
On a day when the weather contrived to favour the all-wheel cars, Poulter's performance in the rear-wheel drive Nissan - he was also credited with the fastest lap of race two - was all the more meritorious, but it was not quite enough to help him improve on the fourth place in the championship he took with him into the season finale.
The 2006 national production car champion struggled with the set-up of his car before qualifying a disappointing seventh on Saturday morning, two places behind team-mate Da Cunha. The opening race was run on a wet circuit after an earlier shower of rain and Poulter settled for seventh after running as high as fifth behind Da Cunha.
Race two was a lot wetter and saw several drivers hampered by misted windscreens, including Da Cunha who was forced to pit after just one lap. Poulter, on the other hand, had no such problems and intelligently used different parts of the track to his rivals to gain a grip advantage.
He was fourth at the end of lap one after starting from third place on the inverted grid, third behind the all-wheel drive Subaru of Olivier and Audi A4 quattro of Shaun Watson-Smith halfway through the 10-lap race, and second for the last three laps.
Da Cunha's younger brother Paulo, driving the SAM Racing/Tubular entry in the Formula Volkswagen championship, finished equal seventh in the championship. He qualified well in fourth place, just three tenths of a second off Wesleigh Orr's pole position time, and was fourth in race one behind Orr, Tasmin Pepper and Tschops Sipuka. He was fourth in race two with two laps to go when he overdid it in the final corner and beached his car in the sand trap.
New SAM Racing team-mate Andre Bezuidenhout, in his second race outing in the formula, was 11th in race one and seventh in the final race of the season.
SAM Racing acknowledges and thanks its other corporate partners for their continued support: Tubular Technical Construction, Exa Motor Group, Ferodo, GP Windscreens, Exa Platinum Rentals, Top Car Paint & Panel, Tri Dent Middelburg, Hi Tech Mag Repairs, Sax Shocks, Signs For You, Rob Green Motorsport, Serbco Distributors and mobicars.