The 29th running of the RST 8 Hours endurance race for lightweight motorcycles, run on Saturday at Killarney near Cape Town, delivered all the drama to be expected when riding little single-cylinder motorcycles flat out, all day, on the tight and twisty, one-kilometre “K” circuit.
Top names in SA and UK Superbike racing mixed it with former champions and inexperienced schoolboys to give this race its unique character and, inevitably, some of the bikes became characters in themselves as the day unfolded.
The race is open to four-stroke motorcycle of up to 150cc, which must be standard, and two-strokes of up to 80cc which may, however, be modified.
Small two-stroke streetbikes are no longer sold in South Africa, and experience has shown that (if you must run a buzzie!) the best results are obtained by dropping a 65cc KTM motocross engine into an old Yamaha TZR50 frame.
Five of the seven two-strokes in the 31-strong field were of this type; the other two were obsolete but very highly-tuned TZR50's.
Race sponsor Jonny Towers, who flies out from the UK each year for this meeting, was determined to win his own race for a fourth consecutive time and had entered a beautifully prepared Honda CBR150 to be ridden by himself, former SA Superbike champion Hudson Kennaugh (now making a name for himself in British Superbike racing), 2011 Western Province Regional champion Trevor Westman and short-circuit graduate Warren “Wozza” Guantario.
Towers and Kennaugh, however, also had an eye on the prize for the first two-stroke home, and entered a TZR/KTM 65 as well, which they were to share with Michael Hill and suspension guru Martin Paetzold, committing themselves to four hours each of flat out racing in 30-degree heat - a big ask, as it turned out.
Their main challenge was expected to come from the “official” Bikefin Honda CBR150 of SA Supersport stars Brent Harran and Bjorn Estment, and Western Province Powersport champion, 13-year-old Hayden Jonas, and the Calberg CBR150 of Andrew Liebenberg, Gerrit Visser Jr and Ryan Snyman, with crew chief Carl Liebenberg, who won this race four times in the 1990's.
Then there was a last-minute entry from 2011 SA Superbike champion Greg Gildenhuys and former SA Supersport star Allan-Jon Venter (now also racing in the UK) on a new, untried KTM 125 Duke, who were expected to make waves if nothing else.
But it was the Peninsula Drilling crew of Brandon Storey, Ayden van Rooijen, Tyron Berry and Ronald Slamet who surprised everybody when Van Rooijen put their CBR150 on pole with a 51.143-second qualifying lap.
They were a scant 0.047sec ahead of the Wackem Racing CBR150 (Tony Sterianos, William Wakefield and Jacques Peskins) and the Woodgray's CBR150 of brothers Aran van Niekerk and Nicholas van der Walt, their father Mark van der Walt and SA Supersport star James Egan.
The RST crew qualified 16th and were caught in the traffic jam while the Wackem crew got a perfect hole shot to lead the Peninsula Drilling, Woodgray's and Bikefin machines off the traditional Le Mans start.
They set a cracking pace from the beginning, circulating at about 50 seconds a lap, while Westman on the RST machine set about doing what he does best - overtaking. One by one he picked off the bikes ahead of him until, by the end of the first half-hour session, he was within striking distance of the leaders.
He then handed over the bike to Kennaugh, and by the end of the first hour it was leading (by a tenuous 3.6 seconds!) from the Peninsula Drilling and Bikefin machines, with the Calberg, Woodgray's and Wackem crews further back but still on the same lap.
Westman and Kennaugh had completed 68 laps at an average of less than 53 seconds a lap - including a pit stop! - but there were still seven hours to go.
At the two-hour mark the RST bike was leading by two laps from the “works” Honda entry, with veterans Donald Craig, Wesley Jones and Graeme Green third on the Craig's CBR150, a lap clear of the Calberg crew, who were just 5.3 seconds ahead of the Peninsula Drilling bike and a lap in front of the Woodgray's and Wackem machines.
Halfway through the third hour the Peninsula Drilling CBR150 broke its clutch cable. The crew replaced the cable in three minutes flat but it cost them four laps and dropped them to sixth, while the RST, Bikefin and Calberg crews forged ahead.
After three hours the RST crew had completed 206 laps (averaging 52.6 seconds a lap including pit stops) with the Bikefin machine two laps adrift and Calberg a further two laps behind.
A few minutes into the fourth hour Egan crashed the Woodgray's bike, breaking the exhaust hanger and right footpeg, costing the team 21 minutes in the pits. Not long after, the bike broke its gear linkage, causing another lengthy pit stop and dropping them to 20th position and out of contention.
Meanwhile, Westman and Kennaugh, the RST squad's fastest riders, were keeping up a punishing pace. Midway through the fourth hour, on lap 234, Westman set the fastest lap of the race, a blistering 49.943 seconds, becoming the first (and only) rider in the 29-year history of the event to break 50 seconds.
Gildenhuys and Venter soon found that the motard-styled, 125cc KTM Duke wasn't as quick on the (slightly uphill) back straight as the Honda CBR150's that made up the majority of the field, although its wide bars and very agile suspension set-up enabled them to throw it around to great effect in the slower sections of the track.
Gildenhuys in particular adopted a very aggressive riding style in his attempts to get on terms with the leaders. It got him two warnings for unsportsmanlike riding during the middle stages of the race, and after that the KTM never ran higher than fifth.
At the halfway mark the RST CBR150 had six laps in hand, with the Bikefin, Craig's and Calberg crews each a lap apart, in that order. A few minutes later, however, Kennaugh dumped the bike in the fast right-hander leading on to the back straight, twisting the right footpeg bracket.
Fortunately, he was able to ride back to the pits, where the crew frantically jacked the bracket straight with tyre levers but, by the time the bike got back out on the track, it was running second.
Between them, Kennaugh and Towers clawed back four laps on the Bikefin team before the end of the fifth hour, putting the bike back in the lead on the road. But by then the team had picked up three two-lap penalties for procedural errors in the pits and only the timekeepers knew for sure who was leading.
But then it all became moot as Estment went round the outside of a back marker, got on to loose debris and went down in a shower of sparks; the official Honda machine was badly bent, suffering a broken gear lever, bent handlebar and, worst of all, a stuck throttle. The resulting repairs kept the bike in the pits for 16 laps and took them out of contention, giving the RST squad a clear lead of three laps over the Peninsula Drilling, Calberg and Craig's bikes at the end of the sixth hour.
Seconds later Junior Joubert (Honda CBR150) went down hard at the exit of the Golf Club section. Joubert and the bike wound up in the middle of the track and the safety bike came out while the ambulance scrambled to pick up Joubert.
But by the time it got there, less than half a minute later, Joubert had picked himself up and was nowhere to be found, which confused everybody for a moment. Cool heads prevailed, however and the ambulance returned to its station while the marshals picked up Joubert's bike - which was running again, albeit not with Joubert aboard, within a few minutes.
After three laps bunched up behind the safety bike, the green flags were waved and the race was back on but, for everybody except the top four teams, the final two hours were a test of mental and intestinal fortitude as exhaustion set in.
The all-girl team of Martie Bosson, Carmen Agnew and Jeanette Kritzinger, having battled all day through three major crashes, went out halfway through the seventh hour when the CDI of their Bosson Performance Exhausts TZR/KTM 65 (by far the oldest bike in the race) burned out.
With an hour to go, the RST squad were again six laps in the clear, with the Peninsula Drilling, Calberg and Craig's teams battling it out for second, separated by less than two laps. Fifth was the KTM Duke, 18 laps down, but only three laps ahead of the Bikefin Honda, which was steadily clawing its way back after Estment's big crash.
The Calberg effort had run like clockwork all day, with no crashes or penalties, and Liebenberg was able to up the pace in the final hour, moving into second ahead of Peninsula Drilling.
And that's how they came home, Jonny Towers riding the final stint on the RST bike to take his fourth win on the trot, six laps ahead of Liebenberg, Slamet and Craig, with the KTM a distant and very hard-fought fifth.
And even then the drama wasn't over: almost within sight of the flag the RST 65 broke its fuel pipe, leaving a disconsolate Westman, who'd been drafted into the two-stroke squad for the final shift, to walk back to the pits while Towers rode his victory lap.
Nevertheless, it was so far ahead of the rest of the two-stroke entries (only three of which were still running at the flag) that it was credited with 18th overall and took the two-stroke prize, having completed 483 laps, 99 more than it closest rival, the Laubscher's TZR/KTM 65 of Malcolm Steyn, Jacques Norval and Paul Livings.