Race Day and Drive Home
Craig had a Cunning Plan. “Mate, instead of racing with the Sports Cars guys, why don’t we move our entries across to the LUK Coastal Challenge? Instead of trundling around toward the back of the field, our lap times will have us in the thick of it!” It seems unbelievable to me now that I needed persuading, but I did. The organisers were happy for me to shift my entry across, so I did and then went out to do timed quali.
Timed quali was a bit frantic, as instead of having a leisurely start to the day I had to suit up and head out in double quick time. There was a fair amount of traffic, which meant that I struggled to find a clear lap and I ended up recording a time in the 1:19’s. I had a self-imposed target of 1:18’s, based on what people had done with similar cars, so 1:19 was slightly disappointing but not too awful. I was gridded in 20th place for the first heat, in a field of about 35 cars.
The first heat was called, I leapt into Blossom, turned the key and found no co-operation from the starter motor. Craig helped identify the errant electrical connection, and we had life. These things always happen when there’s time pressure, as if the excitement of an imminent race was not enough.
The first lap or so were frantic and, mindful of the fact that I had to drive further than usual to get home, I surrendered a place or two in the first lap until everything settled down. First order of business was fending off Barry Kapelus in a Ford Kent powered Mini. Once I had some space on him, I set about catching Ian Thomson in an Opel Rekord. That took me a lap or two; Ian clearly knows his way around Aldo Scribante because when I thought that I would outbrake him into the hairpin at the end of the straight he was having none of that, and stayed off the brakes long enough to leave me with nowhere to go.
By getting good drive out of the final turn, I got past Ian on the main straight and then headed off after Herman Fourie (in a Toyota powered Lotus 7 replica) and Anton Ehlers in a very pretty, bright yellow Escort Mk I. There was a brief moment when I thought that I was going to find a way past both of them going into turn 1, but then Herman moved across and I had to come off the power and wait a bit longer, eventually overtaking Herman after I got better drive off the last corner. And a lap later I managed to narrowly outrun Anton, overtaking him between the last corner and the chequered and beating him by 25 thousandths of a second. At the time I hoped that he had not placed his transponder at his front axle, because mine was on my rollbar, and the difference would have been enough to change the result – by my reckoning my transponder was about a metre ahead of Anton’s when we crossed the line.
The second heat saw me starting where I finished the first, in 11th place. Another slightly timid start saw me chasing and passing Steven Murphy’s red Alfa Giulia. After that there was nobody close enough for me to chase after, but I had my mirrors full, first of Steven’s car, and later of Johan van der Westhuizen’s equally red Ford Interceptor. When we caught up with the backmarkers my usual relaxed and patient overtaking gave way to the desire to place as many obstacles between me and the chasing pack as I could, so I fairly carved through the back of the field, passing three cars in the last two corners. I gained another place when Patrick Hanly went off on the last lap.
Before the second heat, I saw that there was petrol around the flange where the fuel pipe returns fuel to the fuel tank. Between that and the fact that I had enjoyed a fantastic two heats, I did not want to push my luck and do the one hour race. I packed everything up and headed back home for a shower, and then returned to watch the end of the one hour race.
For the drive back to the circuit I borrowed my mother in law’s VW Polo. Now, this is a car that I genuinely like, but after two days in Blossom a VW Polo feels like driving a bouncy castle. When I got back to Aldo Scribante, the first good thing that I noticed was that Craig was not at his pit. That meant that he was still racing. Phew!
Better yet, Craig was out there punching way above his weight. The announcer had him in fourth place, which was slightly optimistic. Craig finished in fifth, ahead of some much “faster” machinery and also won the index of performance, which is a measure of consistency.
Lying in bed on Saturday night I pondered the fuel leak. As the fuel pipes from the tank had been re-welded recently, and the welds looked excellent and deep, I decided that the welds were not at fault, but that the clamp on the fuel hose which meets the pipe for fuel return must not be 100% tight. That would explain the seep of fuel which appeared to run down the pipe and onto the flange. With that sorted (apparently) I slept.
At first light I was up and at the supposedly offending hose clamp. As soon as screwdriver met hose clamp there was a muted click as what had been a tiny crack became a very large crack, just above the weld. And I was about to depart for Cape Town. Swearing didn’t fix the problem. And even my fierce, laser-beam-eyed staring at the pipe didn’t fix it. So I did what anybody would do in the situation – I broke it good and proper.
Then I channelled the spirit of McGyver. First things first, I broke out a stick of chewing gum. While I was chewing, I blocked off the fuel return flexible hose so that the fuel returned into the fuel overflow on the filler neck. Once that was done, I took the chewing gum and used that to block the small hole on top of the flange. Minty! And good to go. Chewing gum is supposed to be good to fix fuel leaks. It may be that the brand I was using was not suitable, but my experience is that chewing gum does not fix fuel leaks. I hear good things about soap though...
As I was hitting the road some distance towards Cape Town, i.e., ahead of the rest of the convoy, I trickled along the freeway, slow as a slug, to let Craig and Ant catch up with me. The weather was mild, but the wind was absolutely howling so when Craig came past me, and I upped my speed, I soon began to regret my decision to drive in beanie and flying goggles.
I further reviewed my decision when, some two hundred metres ahead of me, a large piece of orange detached itself from Craig’s car. I watched in awe and expletives as the bonnet flew high up into the air, before the wind blew it into a field. We stopped to play ‘hunt the bonnet’, and Craig dabbed at the wound on his chin. The bonnet had smacked his crash helmet back with such force that the skin on his chin had split and was bleeding.
With the bonnet retrieved (and me wearing my crash helmet) we set off once more. Driving along the toll section near Storms River, Blossom coughed and then picked up the revs. Hmmmm. The same thing happened again once or twice, and usually just as I was overtaking something. Each time I noticed that the temperature gauge dropped. Clearly, all the sparks were falling out, however briefly.
Twice we ground to a halt, and then re-started. “Now listen mate,” Craig admonished, “if you could just break it and leave it broken I might have a chance of fixing it for you!”
After a number of exciting moments, with coughs and splutters seemingly every time I pulled out to overtake something, Blossom decided that enough was in fact enough, stopped and stayed stopped. Within seconds Craig had identified the offending section of wiring, found the problem and fixed it and we were off again.
In Knysna we stopped for brekkie, where we met up with some of the other Capetonians who were making their way homewards, and Francis Cusens, organiser of the Knysna Hillclimb. After breakfast at the Knysna Quays, we all trooped off to the site of the hillclimb start to salivate at the prospect of some more motorsport adventuring.
The rest of the homeward drive was a breeze. Craig didn’t throw any more pieces of his car at me, and no more sparks fell out of my car. Neither of us ran out of fuel. With the sun setting, Craig and I stopped to refuel at the N1 One Stop opposite where our adventure had begun three days and around 1,500km previously.
Cups of coffee restored some warmth, before a couple of last minute photographs in the car park, and off to our respective homes. I parked Blossom, unpacked, showered and went to bed. After 12 hours on the road – including stops – I could still hear the noise of wind rushing past my crash helmet. And then I fell asleep.
(Picture: John Grosse)
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