Single seater Saturday at Simola
Suzuki celebrated a single-seater Saturday at the Simola Hillclimb, where two Suzuki-powered competitors joined the first Hillclimb in two years.
Suzuki Auto South Africa joined the 2021 Simola Hillclimb as branding sponsor and to showcase its all-new 2021 Suzuki Hayabusa. It also added its support to three Suzuki-powered competitors of which two are racing in the highly competitive King of the Hill championship today and tomorrow.
“We welcomed the opportunity to join the Simola Hillclimb and to play a small role in making it a reality,” says Brendon Carpenter, Brand Marketing Manager of Suzuki Auto South Africa.
“The Simola Hillclimb offers us a unique opportunity to showcase our performance capabilities and to introduce the 2022 Suzuki Hayabusa hyper-sport bike to the competitors and online audience.”
Yesterday, a Suzuki-powered Chevron B26, piloted by Franco Scribante, won the Classic Conqueror race at Simola. It set a winning time of 39.943 seconds on the 1.9 km Hillclimb road to give Scribante his sixth Classic Car Friday title.
Today, the focus shifted to Megan Verlaque and Devin Robertson. Megan is racing a diminutive XTREM Racing Buggy with a GSX-R600 motorcycle engine.
“Today was amazing, but I still have a lot to learn. There were a few growing pains as we struggled to match the gearbox ratios to the engine, but with a bit of work tonight we will be ready tomorrow,” says Verlaque, who is best known as a competitor in the National Rally Championship and Rallycross competition.
The second Suzuki-powered competitor in the King of the Hill race is back for his second stint. Devin Robertson is best known as a V8 supercar racer and competitor in the Inex Legend Series in the USA, but today he piloted a blisteringly fast Radical SR1 single-seater racing car.
The Radical is fitted with a tuned Suzuki Hayabusa engine, which ran consistently in the top 10 fastest cars up the hill. In his last qualifying run for the day, Devin did a time of 41.147, the fifth fastest time.
“The car is performing really well, especially if you consider that we are up against some 600+ horsepower supercars. We are doing our very best to get the best possible line-up for the hill and if we can break through the magical 40 second barrier up the hill, I will be very happy,” says Robertson.
Ian Shrosbree, the CEO of the Knysna Speed Festival (the hosts of the Simola Hillclimb), says: “Running an event during the COVID pandemic is extremely challenging, and the only way to do it is to partner with companies like Suzuki.
“Suzuki joined late this year, but it has been an absolute pleasure working with the team. They are super excited about working with us and they embraced the event fully. Their support of the Suzuki powered competitors and their demo runs of the Suzuki Hayabusa have also added huge value.”
Racing continues tomorrow with the final qualifying runs and the final class and King of the Hill shootouts.
