Pretoria - The tight and twisty 2.4km Zwartkops Raceway west of the city provided the sternest test thus far for the country's top motorcycle racers at Round six of the SuperGP series on Sunday 14 September.
Scorching temperatures - 34 degrees ambient and 53 degrees on the track - the slightest of breezes and the longest national championship races staged at Zwartkops for the two-wheeled brigade - double the normal 10 to 12 laps - took their toll.
After comfortably controlling the first of the two 25-lap SuperGP races from the front, SuperPole winner and championship leader Clint Seller (Kawasaki ZX10R) won his eighth race of the season, taking the chequered flag 0.8sec ahead of the BMW S1000RR machines of Lance Isaacs and Brent Harran.
It was the first time the BMW team had had both its bikes on the podium at the same time.
Dylan White (Kawasaki ZX10R) was fourth ahead of Ryan van Aswegen (Kawasaki ZX10R) and Nicholas van der Walt (Yamaha R1).
'Wild Child' Garrick Vlok (Kawasaki ZX10R) crashed out at about half distance after one of his best rides of the season, while another championship contender, Brandon Goode (Kawasaki ZX10R), went down on lap six, but remounted to finish eighth.
RACE 2
The second feature race of the day got off to an even more dramatic start as Seller bogged of the line and Isaacs got a textbook hole-shot to lead White, Seller and Robbie Portman (Yamaha R1) down to the hairpin.
Then, on lap two, Seller gassed it two hard up the hill and lost the back end, sliding off into the dirt and doing the Kawasaki a lot of no good. He struggled back to the pits but, with the leaders circulating at 1m03s and faster, the few minutes it took the crew to patch the bike together with duct tape and cable ties cost him six laps; the best he could do was to finish for crucial championship points.
But it seemed Seller hadn't got the memo as he set off at lap-record pace, rapidly hauling in White and Harran, who were robustly debating second. On lap 14 he shoved the Kawasaki's nose inside the rear wheel of White's bike, punting his team-mate out of the saddle and sending the bike crashing into the back of Harran's BMW.
Harran went farming big time but managed to keep the shiny side up - he didn't even lose a place! - but White's race was run. The young rider was so angry after he was shown the footage of the incident he couldn't even string together a coherent sentence for the camera.
KARMA IS A BITCH
That left Isaacs and Harran in a commanding 1-2 on the BMWs, with Vlok a distant third, having started from pit lane after crashing out of Race 1 and battling to get the Kawasaki ready in time for the second outing.
But karma, as we have noted before, is a bitch; the makeshift repairs to Seller's machine weren't up to the bashing he was giving them and from half-distance on the bodywork began coming apart, forcing Seller to back and cruise, holding the bike together with the inside of his right leg all the way.
Isaacs came home with a commanding lead of more than 10 seconds over Harran for the BMWs' first 1-2 of the series, with Vlok third - his best result of the season so far - ahead of Goode, Van Aswegen and Van der Walt.
Seller finished eighth, six laps down, to score a crucial eight championship points and lead Isaacs by 16 points (236 to 218) and Harran by 44 points (236 to 92) with four races to go, each worth 25 points.
SUPER600
Championship leader Steven Odendaal (Kawasaki ZX6R) won the first of the two 23-lap races by a comfortable seven seconds from Dean Vos (Yamaha R6) with Nicholas Kershaw (Kawasaki ZX6R) third, a further six seconds in arrears.
Pole-sitter Adolf Boshoff (Kawasaki ZX6R) recovered from a poor start to move up to fourth before crashing while attempting to pass Vos for third. It was an impressive debut by the 14-year-old who has graduated to the nationals via the Northern Regions championship. Mathew Scholtz (Kawasaki ZX-6R), second on the grid and second in the championship, led initially but sat up and pulled off the circuit while lying second behind Odendaal with six laps to go. He was classified 11th.
Scholtz made no mistakes in Race 2, winning his third race of the season after a race-long duel with Odendaal which ended with a wafer-thin 0.105sec gap at the flag. Kershaw was a distant third, more than eight seconds in arrears, followed by Vos and Blaze Baker (Kawasaki ZX6R). Odendaal has 256 championship points after six of the eight scheduled rounds to the 196 of Scholtz and 179 of Vos.
SUPER M
Kyle Robinson (Kawasaki ZX10R) won both 19-lap races and extended his lead to 86 over Justin Gillesen (Kawasaki ZX10), who was a non-finisher in Race 1 and fourth in Race 2. Beau Levey, who rode his standard road Kawasaki ZX6R, also posted a non-finish in Race 1 and sixth in Race 2, and dropped from third to fifth in the championship with 107 points.
Darien Kayser (Kawasaki ZX6R) followed up his impressive back-to-back runner-up finishes in the previous round in Durban in August with more of the same at Zwartkops; in only four outings to date he has accumulated 106 points and is a single point behind fourth-placed Janine Davies (BMW S1000RR), who finished fourth and fifth in Sundays races after starting from sixth in both.
The next round of the SuperGP series will be run at Phakisa Freeway in the Free State on 19 October.