Press Release from Audi South Africa
THE Bridgestone Production Car racing at Zwartkops Raceway on Saturday was a high-speed chase to the flag with the Audi S4 quattros right in the thick of the action.
The series made use of a three-race
recipe for action with two sprint races and a feature race later in the day. As
predicted by defending Class A champion, Michael Stephen (A1 – Engen Xtreme /
Tsogo Sun), in the run-up to the race meeting, the Audi S4 quattros proved more
than capable of the task at hand.
“It was an excellent race weekend,”
says Stephen. “We went quicker than the last time we raced here and achieved two
second place finishes and a third. There were no big changes made to the cars
since Scribante, but we found place to make a few small improvements which,
added together, made a big difference.”
A weekend on the podium for Stephen
saw him finish in second overall – with his teammate, Tschops Sipuka (A2 – Engen
Xtreme / Tsogo Sun), just one step down in third place overall after the three
races. In the first and last race Sipuka was hot on the heels of his teammate as
the pair crossed the line, making the Zwartkops round one of their most
successful team outings this season.
“I'm happy with the race weekend,
it’s one of the best I've had,” says Sipuka. “Clearly these are the dividends
being paid from the amount of work being put into the car. A concerted effort is
paying off and it is all coming together. Building from here we are looking at
really good finishing positions in the championship this
year.”
Unfortunately for Johan Fourie (A9
– EPS), it was not a good race weekend. The event was the first outing for
Fourie with EPS as his main sponsor. With braking system problems in qualifying,
a lower control arm broken in race one, not being able to start race two and
contact with Ettienne van der Linde in race three, the event did not go
according to plan.
“I scored just one point the whole
weekend,” says Fourie. “This has probably been the worst race weekend of my
life. It has been extremely stressful overcoming all the issues we had but we
have to look forward and get it together for the next event.”
Melvill Priest (A7 – Mueller Sport
Medicine) put on a very consistent performance in his Audi S4 quattro at
Zwartkops. Priest's first race finish was in fifth and he improved on that by
moving up to fourth in the second race, finishing between the two Engen Xtreme
Audi S4 quattros. Race three saw Priest again finish in fifth place and these
results together put him fifth overall for the day with a valuable haul of
points from this event.
“It was average weekend for us,”
says Priest. “There was quite a bit of expectation from our side and we had good
race pace but our qualifying let us down. What we take from the weekend is that
our expectations need to be adjusted a bit about how long it will take us to get
the car right – we're just refining things at this point, qualifying is where we
have to do our work, but race pace is good.”
The next outing for the Audi S4
quattros will be at the Durban street race in mid-June when the field of
Bridgestone Production Cars compete as part of the TopGear festival taking place
there.
Audi South Africa
Photos hosted at www.motorpics.co.za
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