Local claims BMW championship win
Local East Rand resident, Mark Jones, claimed the BMW Car Club Gauteng Race Series Championship victory recently in his SavSpeed BMW E36 328i.
The championship is one of the fastest growing, and most exciting, grassroots race series in the country.
The last event of the year took place at Kyalami.
The series forms part of the Northern Regions category of Motorsport South Africa racing. Fields in excess of 25 participants race in some of the fastest circuit BMWs on tracks that include Kyalami, Zwartkops, Midvaal and Phakisa, throughout the year.
After a tough start to his racing career last year, Mark, who earns his daily keep by pushing road cars to their limits as Road Test Editor for Citizen Motoring, teamed up with racing legend and BMW specialist, Sav Gualtieri of SavSpeed, with a view to turn things around in 2013.
The team at SavSpeed entered his car into the Class C competition pedigree by removing all excess weight.
They then tuned the car to such an extent that it was competing with the bigger Class A and B competitors.
In only his second year as a proper race car driver, Mark had a stellar season.
He managed to win four of the eight championship races and finished as the runner-up in three races.
Mark needed to take two wins at the end of season meeting, to not only win his class championship, but also the overall championship.
Mark said it was a highly emotional year, coming from the lows of last year to the highs of this year.
“I set myself modest goals, but each time we took the car out we set the fastest class laps at the various tracks, with the car just getting better and better. I would like to say it was all down to raw talent, but the true key to my success was not only having a reliable monster of a car, it was the constant behind-the-scenes mentoring of Sav that separated me from the rest, and prepared me for each race day,” he said.
