The Lakefied resident produced tremendous, tyre-shredding displays this year in his Achilles Tyres 350Z Nissan in the national SupaDrift Series to claim the ultimate prize of 2017 SupaDrift Series champion.
McFarlane headed into the recent SupaDrift 6 finals, just up the road at Carnival City in Brakpan, as the top contender for the day followed closely by Eric ‘The Viking’ van Eyssen.
The top eight stages flew by and all the drivers impressed.
McFarlane was definitely on top of his game and handed his second round opponent, Morne Venter, a clean sweep.
A semi-final run between Paulo Gouveia and McFarlane, to decide the championship, saw a contentious protest come from the former.
After significant reviews of the battle, judges deemed McFarlane the winner and the outright SupaDrift champion for 2017.
The final battle between Margate’s Gavin Puren and McFarlane went off ablaze, but Puren left a gap on the chase, which saw McFarlane take a clean sweep for the day’s racing.
“It was a great wrap up to an amazing year of having to contend with so many talented drivers from all over South Africa,” said the Benonian.
“The level of driving this year was too intense.
“The fact that I literally needed to be on the podium at each event just shows how the level has improved and all the drivers pushed really hard.
“To win the last two events and to seal the championship on home ground was incredible and I could not have done it without my amazing crew and sponsors.”
The SupaDrift 6 event also saw something a little bit different with the addition of the Drum Dash, a time trial autocross race around a custom course.
This afforded local drivers the opportunity to qualify for the highly-anticipated Gymkhana GRiD event, happening at Carnival City on November 18 and 19.
Gymkhana GRiD is a spectacular event with driving megastar Ken Block.
Twenty-two international drivers will take on the locals to see who rules the GRiD.
SupaDrift competitors JP van der Spuy and Riaan Stokes, driving for Dragon Energy, each qualified with golden tickets, as well as Mathys Naude and Stuart Gregory.
Clare Vale (also a Lakefield resident), the only woman competitor, happened to pick up a wildcard place in her campaign to topple the boys.
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