Zwartkops raceways has always been a special place for me, so I was very excited to head there for the third round of the GR Cup, driven by Netstar. With quite a lot of laps behind the seat of my GR Corolla so far, the confidence has built up and I can confidently say that the wheel-to-wheel battle excites me.

GR Cup

Following the unfortunate incidents that took place at Kyalami, Toyota made safety a huge and installed brand new Powerbrakes in all our cars and this gave all of us a sigh of relief. This would mean that the first practice on Friday would be dedicated to bedding in our new brakes and we did just that.

Sean Nurse (Autotrader) quickly found his rhythm setting a belter of a lap with Devon Scott (GR Driving Academy) in second place. I had not found any pace and kept struggling to stay up with the rest of the drivers.

Going into the final practice session, I managed to quickly ring up an old friend, Mandla Mdakane (Toyota Gazoo Racing Rally driver) and after his feedback, I managed to end the day fourth in my class ahead of Jaco vd Merwe (The Citizen) and Bernie Hellberg (TCB media) much to my delight as I would need the confidence ahead of an early morning qualifying session on Saturday.

We all made our way to the track early morning as we would be the first out on track for the qualifying session, with the advice from Mandla still ringing in my head, I was set for the round. I managed to beat my practice session, however, so did everyone.

Race one would see me starting in fifth behind Hannes Visser (Lat’ Wiel) who had out qualified me by five tenths. Still beaming in confidence, race one would be a huge tussle between myself and Andries de Villiers (Rola Toyota) in his Yaris, however I managed to get past him.

The next hurdle would be trying to pass Visser and as luck would have it, Visser spun out of track as he was battling vd Merwe and I was right there to take the position in the last lap to claim fourth. While the race result was a confidence booster, I had not managed to qualify ahead of Visser, he had pipped me on best lap times however the challenge was also intense.

I had two dealer-driven Toyota Yaris’ ahead of me and this would prove to be a difficult mountain to climb ahead of race two. I spent the vast part of the second race battling it out with the Toyota Yaris’ ahead of me and this would mean vd Merwe and Visser would battle it out and Visser got the better of vd Merwe taking third place.

I came in fifth in our GR Corolla class behind vd Merwe and ahead of Hellberg who had also turned up the heat in the second race.

With the fourth round away in the windy city of Gqeberha on the 29th of June, my confidence has grown incredibly since the first round. I am looking forward to the fourth round and hopefully, I can secure a greater overall result.