Cold, Wet, and very tricky conditions at Midvaal

This past weekend saw the SuperHatch brigade take to the Vaal on the very weekend that the first cold front of 2013 would arrive, and with it a storm for the 2 days..

Friday the 19th of April a fair amount of us set out to Midvaal to bunt off an area so that we could park together as they don’t do pit allocations, set up ‘camp’ and get some practice, HOWEVER with none of us taking neither our wet suits nor our kayaks, we had to grow webbed feet and toughen up.

Not too many of us went out on track to brave the slippy and very wet track, we were doing our best to stay dry as even in the pits we were getting wet, Pierre Lubbe was the first victim ending up with a smashed front end after going off and becoming a passenger on the wet grass, thankfully it could be fixed.

So Friday night a few brave souls slept in their vans and the very brave (I have another word for this bravery but it shouldn’t be used here) ;-) Jaco Kriel set up a tent, by Saturday morning his wife and kids had very little dry clothes or shoes and a few drivers were hoping for attendance points and thought going home or drinking beer for extra points would be a better option BUT we don’t give up that easily and set out to the track for qualifying/warm up.

This past weekend saw the SuperHatch brigade take to the Vaal on the very weekend that the first cold front of 2013 would arrive, and with it a storm for the 2 days..

Friday the 19th of April a fair amount of us set out to Midvaal to bunt off an area so that we could park together as they don’t do pit allocations, set up ‘camp’ and get some practice, HOWEVER with none of us taking neither our wet suits nor our kayaks, we had to grow webbed feet and toughen up.

And in the drivers briefing ALL categories were given the option to go home and come back the next day (that is not an option) we were all there and ready to race, unfortunately the officials decided that the ‘safest’ option would be to have a start under yellow and this would be until turn 4 which is the long back straight, so in a nutshell a processional pull away and no overtaking or racing until the long back straight! So we did as we were told and had this very boring start and started racing on the back straight.

Class B saw rookie driver Calitz on the front row alongside Jaco Kriel, they kept the class B guys all nicely bunched up until the back straight, Martin (baby blue RDG Opel Kadett) got ahead and took with him Veteran SuperHatch driver, making a welcome return in his wife’s car Gerhard Henning (the Gold MK3 Golf) along with him and Calitz hung onto 3rd, Kriel, Lotter and Baloyi were never too far away from the lead bunch.

Class A – front row went to Garland (Honda civic)and Lubbe, Garland was faultless and from pole he never once went below first on the road, van Nieuwenhuizen was charging hard and had a look a few times but just couldn’t make it stick, he eventually cooked his tyres and gave Brett the breathing space he needed. Tugwell had a very lonely 3rd place drive pretty much from start to finish, with du Toit battling with the ST Ford and Mel not making the 2nd start, Chris and Pierre finished in the class B battle.

Class C saw Alta on pole with Pienaar alongside her, Pienaar got the jump and pulled a gap, which Marius started closing down from the back of the grid, Louise was in the bunch as always and James Fuller was there too, more than once there were no less than 3 – 7 class C cars going for the same turn at once without any incidents. Down the back straight Heyes, van Wyk, vd Zee, would all go side by side. Great racing. But Marius took the flag ahead of Pieter and Louise.