The SimGrid’s latest mini-championship got underway earlier this week, with a strong selection of drivers heading down to South Africa for the inaugural Kyalami Series. Round one saw plenty of action at the recently-rejuvenated circuit, and here’s how it all played out.
Lozanov converts pole to victory in the Super Trofeos
The first race of the new tournament would see our drivers battle it out in the Lamborghini Huracan Super Trofeo. A notoriously twitchy and hard-to-handle car, this particular raging bull would be even trickier to tame around the demanding Kyalami layout.
In qualifying, it was Bulgaria’s Kristiyan Lozanov who secured pole position in the #545 entry, narrowly beating fellow pre-season favourites, Alexander Novikov and Félix Ruppert.
At the start of the race, Lozanov retained his pole advantage, but behind Novikov was squeezed wide and dropped down to fourth place, as Ruppert and Errol Verwey went through.
The Russian was keen to fight back quickly, and as Verwey ran wide through The Crocodiles, Novikov managed to reclaim third position on the inside line at Cheetah bend. A further moment of waywardness for Verwey allowed Reegan Mitchell and Rob Taplin to close up in the battle for fourth on the following lap, while Patrick Nagy had fallen behind the pair of them. A little further back, Dave Junior also made good early progress to climb into the top ten from twelfth on the grid.
By lap six, Harry Phillips and Ventsislav Raychinov found themselves engaged in a tight midfield tussle, while up at the front the battle was seemingly on for the lead.
Could anyone challenge Lozanov?
A mistake in sector one from Lozanov allowed Ruppert to close within three-tenths of a second to his rear bumper, but that didn’t last for long. The Bulgarian followed up a dodgy first sector with a purple sector two, and by the end of the lap, the gap had extended back to eight tenths.
Meanwhile, Raychinov had to correct a snap oversteer at The Crocodiles, which promptly opened the door for Phillips to fly by at Cheetah. After that, Raychinov seemed as though he lost a bit of rhythm, and was soon overtaken by Ian Harvey and Dominic Fekete as well.
Just behind the leaders, however, the battle for fourth was heating up as the race approached half distance.
Verwey’s car had been looking unsettled for the entirety of the race, and this was beginning to hamper the Dutchman’s race pace. As a result, Mitchell had closed in, and lay in wait should Verwey’s Super Trofeo eventually go beyond the edge of adhesion.
In the end, though, a combination of stoic defence and backmarker intervention would mean that Verwey could hold onto P4, narrowly ahead of Mitchell and Taplin. In fact, it was Mitchell who had to watch his mirrors in the final moments of the race, though Taplin wasn’t quite able to make the move stick through the Jukskei Sweep.
Up at the front though, Lozanov made it look easy as he beat Ruppert to the line by a controlled margin of just under a second. However, the Luxembourger would get his revenge in race two…
Fast-starting Félix Ruppert takes Huracan GT3 win
The second of five races in The Kyalami Series saw the grid switch to the Lamborghini Super Trofeo’s big brother, the Huracan GT3. Although the GT3 car is faster than its one-make series counterpart, it is also deemed a slightly easier vehicle to drive. For that reason, it was expected that this would be an even more well-behaved race than the first, however, things didn’t quite pan out that way…
Nagy was the driver who claimed pole position for this one, after snatching the premier grid slot away from Ruppert on his very final attempt in qualifying. Unfortunately though, for Nagy, his lead didn’t last long, as at the first corner Ruppert managed to sweep past on the outside line.
Mitchell also made a demon getaway to climb up from sixth to third, but behind the leaders, chaos ensued in the mid-pack. After being squeezed onto the grass, Fadi Sader earned himself a drive-through penalty for an unsafe rejoin, when he ended up pile-driving into the side of Max Grime and David Fong. Further around the lap, Scott Ticehurst also picked up a drive-through for contact with Denise Pope.
On lap two, the drama continued as race one podium finisher Novikov ended up spinning out of contention following a tangle with Gerhard Völzer. Plus, to add salt to the wound, the Russian was handed a fifteen-second penalty for his role in the incident.
Amidst the chaos, polesitter Nagy had fallen down to fifth position away from the cameras in what was a nightmare start. A few car lengths behind meanwhile, the battle for eight began to heat up between Phillips, Junior and Carlo Barberi.
At this point, the race was interrupted again by yet another incident. This time, Mike Landreth span out and came to a halt on the racing line at Cheetah, perpendicular to the stream of traffic. Unsighted, Greg van Niekerk slammed head-first into the side of Landreth’s Huracan in a gut-wrenching impact.
Mitchell meanwhile had been one of the star performers throughout the day, and by lap six managed to work his way up into second place ahead of Super Trofeo winner Lozanov. In fact, Mitchell quickly left Lozanov in the clutches of Verwey, and instead went after the race leading car of Ruppert. By lap ten, the gap had come down to less than half a second.
But, as had been the case all race long, a moment of close battling was quickly followed up by another huge accident. This time, Josh Inman was the guilty party. It had been a frustrating race up to this point anyway for the #110 entry, but after a spin at The Crocodiles, that frustration shone through as he engaged in an unsafe rejoin. Once again, Pope was out of luck and got comprehensively taken out by Inman’s erratic Huracan.
Late drama interrupts the leaders
In the final few minutes of the race though, the battle for victory was shaping up to be rather spectacular indeed. With just a handful of laps left, the top four cars were separated on the road by less than two seconds.
With lapped traffic in their sights, it looked as though a prime overtaking opportunity may arise for Mitchell and the onrushing pack. However, the exact opposite turned out to be true.
Mitchell was badly compromised by a lapped car at Sunset corner, forcing him to run wide and narrowly hold onto second place from Lozanov. Ruppert had also had a wild moment through the same corner, so hadn’t escaped too far up the road, but in the end, time simply wasn’t on Mitchell’s side.
With that, it was a victory for Luxembourg’s Ruppert, though Mitchell and Lozanov can be pleased with a good points haul in the remaining podium slots.
What next for the Kyalami Series?
The SimGrid returns to Kyalami on Thursday the 10th of June, but next time out the field will be racing in Porsche machinery instead. Race one will see the grid packed full of 991 GT3 Cup cars, while race two will make use of the ever-entertaining GT4-spec 718 Caymans.
With a win and a second-place to his name, Ruppert will head into the event as championship leader with a tally of 92 points, six ahead of race one winner Lozanov.
Mitchell and Verwey find themselves in third and fourth place on 68 and 64 points respectively, ahead of Taplin who completes the top five on 58. Taplin, however, has an equal tally to Nagy in sixth, who should be a force during the remainder of the season if he manages to match his race pace to his qualifying ability.
Join us again this Thursday for more spectacular action in South Africa!
