1st Formula VW Podium
The 3rd round of the WesBank Super Series was held at Port Elizabeth’s Aldo Scribante Race Circuit last weekend. The new Formula VW class had grown from 11 entries in Cape Town to 15 entries in Port Elizabeth.
The two most popular new entries were A1GP test driver Wesleigh Orr and A1GP test driver candidate, Marc Murray. They would both be racing for Team Morgado under the experienced & watchful eye of Stuart Thompson.
My race weekend got off to a more than interesting start…..due to the lack of flights from Cape Town to PE, we would only arrive on Thursday morning. VWSA had organized a private test for all Formula VW’s on that day, which meant that we were going to miss a session or two. The first test session was at 10:30 and our plane only landed at 11:10!
As soon as we touched down, my race engineer (Claudio Piazza-Musso) and I bolted to the awaiting car with our luggage so that we could get to the track as soon as possible. As we arrived the 2nd practice session had already begun & thanks to my brilliant team, my racecar car was already waiting in pitlane with everything ready to go. I changed into my racing gear on pitlane, jumped into the car and went out to do my first session. I had never even been to this circuit before so everything was new to me. I didn’t have a chance to walk the circuit either so all I could draw upon was Claudio’s experience and a track map that I traced off Google Earth.
After all the dust had settled and my first session was complete, we discovered that my best lap was only 1 second off the top guys. From then on we simply chipped away at basic setups, working on some of my lines in the latter part of the circuit. Slowly but surely the times started to drop and by the end of the first day of testing we were 0.8 off the pace. I have never been that close to the pace on the first day so we were all quite happy.
The next day (Friday) was official testing for all the classes participating at the National event. That meant that we had three practice sessions with a qualifying run at the end of the day. Our setup was already quite good so it was simply a matter of further fine tuning our car for new tyres when qualifying arrived.
By the time we got to qualifying we were still 0.7 off the ever improving pace but very much mixing with the more experienced drivers. Our aim was to qualify in the top eight for both heats and to find about 1 second on new tyres.
It turned out to be better than that. After my 10 lap run, my best lap time was good enough for 3rd on the grid! We had also found 1.5 seconds on the new tyres which meant our setup progress was spot on. The top 5 grid places for the 1st heat were Morgado, Cronje, Perel, Orr and Murray. The grid for heat 2 (your 2nd best lap of the qualifying session) was Morgado, Cronje, Orr, Stephens and Perel. This was turning out to be our best weekend by far, clearly progress had been made.
In the previous 2 race events, we have had an incident in at least one of the two heats. The aim for this meeting was to keep my nose clean and bring the car home for at the very least 2 respectable finishes on raceday. The Aldo Scribante Circuit is very narrow and has long corners which makes passing close to impossible. With this in mind, we had to focus on defending in the first 2 laps and then maintain consistent lap times for the rest of the race.
Race 1 turned out to go almost 100% to plan. My start was good and I didn’t lose any places to Orr or Murray…….but I did lose a lot of time to the two leaders. By the end of the first lap they were almost half a straight ahead, which was not good news. As the race went on though, the car came back to me and I managed to peg the gap, my laptimes were very competitive with Morgado just pipping me to the new lap record by 0.04 seconds! In the end, I beat Orr and held on to 3rd place which meant my very first podium in main circuit competition. It was a very satisfying feeling indeed. The top 6 cars fastest lap times were merely 0.2 seconds apart, illustrating just how competitive this form of racing is!
Heat 2 was going to be much of the same as Heat 1. The track is very tough to pass on, so I knew that moving up from 5th place in the race was going to be incredibly difficult. I got a good start and kept my position going into lap 2. Once again though, I lost a lot of time on cold tyres and was left to defend for the rest of the heat. Michael Stephen and Wesleigh Orr were racing very closely so I watched carefully and very cautiously got as close as I could in case one of them made a mistake, leaving the door open for me. Marc Murray was on my tail for the entire race, keeping me honest and making sure that I had a hard time of keeping my position. I simply made sure that I maximised my entry speed into the corners so that Marc couldn’t overtake me under braking. This proved successful and by the end of the race, I held onto my 5th position.
Overall, I finished in 4th place for the day. The final results were Morgado, Cronje, Orr, Perel and Stephens. The team was very happy with the performance and with a very solid points haul; I am now 4th in the Formula VW Championship. Hopefully I can maintain this form for the next few races… anything is now possible.
Thank you very much to my sponsors Tubular Technical Construction, Ferodo, Signs for You, SAM Racing and Leatt-Brace.