New growth for SA Endurance Series

The SA Endurance Series’ new owners, Xolile Letlaka and Izak Spies, under the management of Wayne Riddell and his exclusive team, have revitalised this series.

“We adopted a year of class consolidation down from the original 15 classes previously run to just the top five that showed us where the most competitors enjoyed racing. This move allowed the competitors to race in bigger classes and gave us the opportunity to stabilise our competitor offerings. This move, coupled with the new look and feel of our corporate identity, gave us the perfect opportunity to show our customers that we are not only here to stay, but want to grow endurance racing to levels last seen in the early 80s,” said Riddell.

Spies said, “Now that our customers have seen what we are capable of, we are experiencing several people returning to the sport. This is especially true within the V8 racing space. Many stalwarts of yesteryear’s V8 racing, who still have V8 machinery in their garages, have seen the value proposition we offer the endurance competitors. The costs per hour of actual on-track time in South Africa is on average three times cheaper with us than conventional sprint racing of 10 to 12 lap races currently on offer. Besides, I have many V8 cars of my own in my racing garage that are just sitting on jacks under cover.

“We went to PE last month with a V8 car and entered it into the open class as a test. We were blown away with the ability of the car’s performance in relation to those currently competing in the open class A field. All we need to do is upgrade the fuel refill system to accommodate safety with pitstops.”

Riddell said they intend to offer the V8 SuperCup Club Class competitors a similar offering the SA GT competitors currently enjoy, with the running of two one-hour races. They will offer the V8 owners three opportunities of class, like that of the SA GT field. These will be V8 Open, V8 Limited, and V8 Classic.

The V8 Open is for unrestricted V8 space-framed cars, the Limited class will be in line with current series regulations, which will allow current competitors to try out endurance racing with their cars without having to alter or modify them too much, and the V8 Classics will be for the non-space-framed cars of yesteryear. The only difference to that of the SA GT cars is that the V8s will run one hour alone and then the second one-hour race will form part of the first hour of the three-hour endurance races. The reason for this is that it will allow those competitors who wish to continue and race the full three hours, to just continue to race for the remaining two hours. This will give them an even better value proposition of on-track costs.

Source: MotorPress