The Citizen back in the saddle as GR Cup heads for Zwartkops

It’s been more than a month since the enthralling Toyota GR Cup second-round action at Kyalami, and the six members of the motoring media are chomping at the bit to rev up their engines at Zwartkops on Saturday.

Hannes Visser (L’at Wiel) and Alex Shahini (Carmag), who both walked away unscathed after big crashes due to braking issues at Crowthorne Corner at Kyalami, have had time to reflect and will no doubt come out hard to make up for dropping points.

Nurse leads GR Cup title race

Sean Nurse (AutoTrader) is sitting pretty at the top of the GR Cup media division table on 28 points. Unlike fellow sportsmen holding UK passports, the experienced Nurse is living up to his reputation as the pre-event favourite.

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Having finished third in the title race in the inaugural GR Cup season, behind the wheel of a GR Yaris, he already holds a 13-point lead over the rest of the field after four-straight wins.

The rest of us span only six points. Shahini (15) is second, followed by Visser (14), The Citizen Motoring (11), Bernie Hellberg (Driven, 10 points) and Kumbi Mtshakazi (Kumbi-M on Cars, nine).

Home track

After walking away in last place with only three points in the GR Cup season-opener at Killarney, we made good progress at Kyalami by bagging eight points for second behind Nurse – aided by Visser and Shanini’s misfortune, of course.

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With the title race this close there is no space for complacency and we’ll have to do it all again at Zwartkops. The 1.9km eight-corner layout is all six drivers’ home track. It is the home of the Toyota Gazoo Racing SA headquarters and where we got accustomed to the GR Corolla before the season got underway.

With much more seat time under our belts now, it will be interesting to see how this weekend’s lap times compare to when we had our very first outing there back in February.