Mark Jones, right, finished third behind Setshaba Mashigo and Chad Luckhoff during Round 3 of the Toyota GR Cup.
It was a crazy day of racing the GR86 in Round 3 of National Extreme Series in the Toyota SA GR Cup 2023 last weekend at Zwartkops Raceway.
Early morning qualifying saw Setshaba Mashigo bounce back to the front with a time of 1 minute 13.901 seconds, Chad Lückhoff right there on 1:13.990 and Brendon Staniforth slotting into third with 1:14.155.
I managed to smooth things out a bit and found a full second from my practice pace to jump ahead of Denis Droppa with a 1:14.343 to a 1:14.442. Reuben van Niekerk and John Thomson slotted in behind us with a pair of 15s. By now you have figured out just how close this Toyota Gazoo Racing competition was going to be.
Some committed manoeuvring on the first lap saw Droppa mug me and Staniforth to go chasing after Lückhoff and Mashigo.
This meant the two of us, and Van Niekerk were soon involved in a high-speed game of mortal combat, with Thomson sticking his nose in there to feed off the scraps while the three cars ahead of us disappeared.
Racing is not knitting. Things happen fast and there were some moves made that were going to stick… and some that weren’t.
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And once all the dust had settled, it was Van Niekerk who stayed ahead of Thomson and myself with Staniforth rounding out the bottom four.
The three guys out front were running like a high-speed train until Lückhoff ran a touch wide and sideways at turn six on the last lap, and this allowed Mashigo through for his first race win, with Droppa also cashing in on this mistake to steal second.
Race 2 started in a very similar fashion. This time I planned to keep the inside line, going into turn 2, no matter what, then concentrate on hanging onto the three earlier pacesetters, and that way stay out of trouble.
This great plan only worked for a few corners, before some robust challenging combined with a few clean moves saw Van Niekerk get past me. Then I had to work to get past him. Such is racing.
Things finally started to calm down after I managed to pull a gap on Van Niekerk. I was then able to settle and go chasing after the front three.
I got onto the back of them, but was never going to get any sort of overtake opportunity in the dying part. That train was moving smooth and fast.
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Just when I thought I’d finish a solid fourth, the race gods decided the day was far from over. On the last lap, Lückhoff got the better of Droppa in turn 5. In his haste to get back on equal terms, Droppa somehow misjudged a cut back move that resulted in solid contact with Lückhoff.
This move not only saw him having to limp into the pits and out of the race, it allowed me to steal a fortuitous third and some unexpected silverware behind Lückhoff and double race winner Mashigo.
If you thought the dramatic racing between the rear-wheel drive Toyota GR86s was over, you would be wrong. Thomson had prime viewing space and watched as Staniforth and Van Niekerk chopped and changed places along with some body wrap, until Staniforth overcooked it trying to hold off a last ditch effort from Van Niekerk in the last corner and went farming, conceding fourth place.
Whenever there is a tough, incident filled, day of racing, lessons are learnt more about man than they are machine.
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