By Dave Abrahams
The 32nd running of the annual RST/Suzuki South 8 Hours for lightweight motorcycles at the weekend, on the tight and twisty one-kilometre ‘K’ circuit at Killarney, north of Cape Town, was dominated by a race-long battle between two very different machines, each wearing the livery of the lead sponsor.
Bike No.17, winner of the past two 8 Hours, a conventional but meticulously prepared Honda CBR150, was ridden by short-circuit legend Trevor ‘Killer’ Westman, World Superstock rider David ‘McFlash’ McFadden, newly-crowned Powersport champion Warren ‘Starfish’ Guantario and UK-based race sponsor Jonny Towers, head of bikewear manufacturer RST.
The second RST machine, however, was anything but conventional, with a 65cc two-stroke KTM motocross engine bored out to 80cc in an obsolete TZR50 racing frame with cycle parts and furniture by local suspension guru Martin Paetzold, who shared the ride with former SA Superbike champion Hudson Kennaugh, now carving a successful career in British Superstock racing, and Towers – putting him in the unique position of racing against himself.
PERFECT START
Westman put the CBR150 on pole with a qualifying lap of 49.456sec, a quarter of a second quicker than Kennaugh’s best on the KTM. The only other bike under 50sec was the Race Prep CBR150 of former Grand Prix rider Niall MacKenzie, his sons Taylor and Tarran and veteran English racer Phil Ashley.
Unlike previous years when the RST machine got stage fright and refused to fire, Westman judged the Le Mans-style start to perfection and got away at least a second head of Kennaugh and Ashley. By the end of lap two however, both had been demoted by Ayden van Rooijen on the Peninsula Drilling CBR150, who was to hold second until the first rider change on lap 17, when Brandon Storey lost out to the Mackenzie machine.
Two laps later the Peninsula Drilling bike became incontinent in Hoal’s Hoek; Storey went down on his own oil and, seconds later, Hayden Jonas lost the front end of the Calberg CBR150, slid off the track and into the Storey’s bike. The safety bike came out for six laps while the marshals cleaned the track, the damaged bikes were pushed back to the pits and Storey was shuttled to the medical centre for a quick check-up.
SWOPPING THE LEAD
On lap 44 Kennaugh moved into the lead and handed the ‘stroker over to Towers, who held the No.17 bike at bay until lap 66, exactly on the first hour. That set the pattern for the rest of the race as the two RST machines battled it out for line honours, repeatedly swopping the lead, never more than a lap apart and often within just a couple of bike-lengths.
Meanwhile the Craig’s CBR150 had settled into a steady third, after the Mackenzies and a Gauteng entry for SA Supersport hotshots Brent Harran, Malcolm Rudman and Bjorn Estment dropped out of contention, the former suffering from an intermittent electrical gremlin and the latter a string of minor problems that were simply the result of inadequate preparation, eliciting scathing comments from Harran’s father!
The Craig’s bike was to have been ridden by veteran Donald Craig – a Regional champion in the early 1990s – short circuit expert Wesley Jones and Powersport star Graeme Green, but Green had broken a collarbone two weeks earlier in Port Elizabeth and the plated repair was still under medical supervision, leaving Craig and Jones to ride turn and turn about.
Halfway through the second hour Carmen Agnew crashed the all-girl Bosson Performance Exhausts CBR150 at the end of the back straight, injuring a shoulder and reducing the ladies to a duo (Martie Bosson and Jeannette Kok-Kritzinger) – but within five minutes the bike was running again with new clutch and gear levers and Kok-Kritzinger in the saddle.
TWO HOURS, 132 LAPS
After two hours and 132 laps the KTM was leading its stable-mate by 17 seconds, with Craig’s one lap down in third and Peninsula Drilling fourth, just ahead of the Mackenzies, who were riding the wheels off their temperamental Honda, Calberg and the Wackem CBR150, ridden by Tony Sterianos, William Wakefield, Timothy Clark and Michael Wahl.
Near the end of hour three Nicholas van der Walt pushed the VanBros CBR150 he was sharing with his father Mark, his brother Aran van Niekerk and SA Supersport star James Egan back to the pits. The bike had suffered a total electrical infarction and wasn’t going anywhere, so Mark - ever the gentleman – agreed to help the ladies in the Bosson pit, while Van Niekerk took over Green’s seat at Craigs, and Nicholas joined teenagers Ronald van Rensburg, Water Hattingh and David Endicott on the Rocket CBR150.
Eleven minutes before the halfway mark, however, Stavro Michel took a huge tumble coming out of the Big Esses on to the back straight with the Jackhammer’s CBR150, ridden and crewed by members of the Harley-Davidson Club of Cape Town. The safety bike came out for six laps while Michel was gently scooped up and taken to hospital with what later turned out to be several injured ribs – and shortly after that the orange No.9 Honda was running again.
FOUR DOWN, FOUR TO GO
After four hours and 268 laps, the two RST bikes were still on the same lap with the No.17 CBR150 leading and the Craig’s machine holding a steady third, ahead of Peninsula Drilling, Calberg, the Mackenzies and the Wackem outfit.
In the next two hours the four-stroke riders put a lap on their two-stroke team mates for the first time, as the two leading machines, running consistent sub-50 second laps, pulled out a lead of seven laps over Craig’s, eight laps from Peninsula Drilling and 11 from Calberg, while the Mackenzies and Wackem Racing were now more than 10 minutes out of touch.
Halfway through the seventh hour the youngest rider in the race, 11-year-old Luca Balona, misjudged his entry and stopped almost dead in the first 180. Jonas, right behind him on the Calberg machine, had nowhere to go and went down hard, smashing the bike’s master cylinder and spilling brake fluid on the circuit.
The safety bike went out while the marshals worked frantically to clean the track surface, but it took more than six minutes before racing and the repairs cost a furious Jonas two places.
ELECTRIC TENSION
With an hour to go the gap between the RST bikes and Craig’s in third had grown to eight laps, with Peninsula Drilling a further lap in arrears, nine laps ahead of the Mackenzies. The Wackem and Calberg bikes were on the same lap, an insurmountable 25 laps adrift of the leaders.
The tension of the last hour was electric as Towers on the No.17 bike and Paetzold on the KTM chased each other around the circuit, often less than a bike-length apart, cutting through the traffic at full-on sprint pace.
They were so evenly matched that Towers handed the leading bike over to Westman, with less than 15 minutes to go. The team’s fastest rider very nearly succeeded in lapping the KTM a second time - he was less than 10 metres adrift when the flag came down five seconds after 6pm and the circuit suddenly fell silent after eight hours and 542 laps of mayhem.
37 STARTED, 33 FINISHED
A superb final hour by the Craig’s riders kept them in third, within eight laps of the leaders and two laps ahead of Peninsula Drilling. The Mackenzies, Wackem Racing, Calberg, Adam Wright and Gary Wilson, Powerflow (father Dick Bate, an SA championship contender in the 1980’s who hadn’t ridden this circuit for 33 years, son Richard, daughter Andrea, a successful GTI challenge tin-top racer who had never before raced on the K circuit, and Grant Raeside) and the CPR team of Damien and Uriah van Zyl, Kevin Cassie and Warren Strydom, made up the top 10.
Of the 37 starters, 33 were still running after eight hours, among them the brand new Platinum Yamaha YZF-R125 of Adrian van der Merwe, and Dalton and Denton Walters, assembled in Europe with a Minarelli engine in a French MBK frame, which was so standard the lights were still working, and completed 473 laps without so much as a scratch to be classified 22nd.