Race Report: Round 5 Northern Regions Superbikes – Phakisa 28/6/2008

The latest round in the Northern Regions Championship took place at the Phakisa Raceway. There has been a huge effort put in by the Vox Yamaha Racing team for round 5. Time spent on using the correct compounds and fine tuning suspension to get a good race setup.

Friday Practice

The team was unable to get to the circuit on Friday morning as work comes first. Gary arrived at the track late on Friday afternoon and was only able to get in one session of practice. The times were very respectable with Gary posting a 1:41-8.

The bike felt good and setup was working with a few of the other competitors having problem with rear tyre wear. Time was up and no more chance to practice on Friday.

Saturday RACE Day

Qualifying was first on the agenda and with a couple of national riders getting some valuable testing time a good grid position was critical. We decided to qualify on old tyres and keep the new set for the race. Gary went out and posted a 1:41-708 which put him 5^th on the grid behind the very fast National riders of Clint Sellar, Arushen Moodley, Trevor Crookes and Julian Odendaal.

Race 1

With a bad start and down to seventh going into turn 1 and some bravery going around the outside of a few riders and moving up to fifth on the first lap. Gary passed the young Nic Grobler riding an R1 this weekend and moving into fourth place. He set his personal best ever lap time of 1:41-238 and moved clear of the pack by about 2 seconds.  Last lap and a couple of the national riders had pulled in and with Arushen taking the win the Vox Yamaha team took second place. It was a great result and hopefully more to come in race 2.

Race 2

Starting in sixth place for race 2 and a much better start for Gary had him tucked in behind Julian and Trevor Crookes. They slowly got away and left Gary and Jannie to fight it out. The lap board made easy reading simply just saying……. +0. The last a few laps and Jannie dropped slightly off the pace and this time all the national riders opting to pull in and Gary to take first place in race 2.

This was an overall win for the Vox Racing Yamaha Team with the bike very well prepared by Andre Venter and Joe Gordon of T&A Motorsport. A big thank-you must go to all the other sponsors who made this weekend possible.

This weekend’s great result has moved the team to the top of the championship in the Northern Regions Championship. The overall results were as follows:

            Gary van den Berg     VOX Racing Yamaha              37  Points                    

            Michael Shortt                Swat Security Suzuki                 32  Points

            Nicolas Grobler              Yamaha R1                                 27 Points

The next round will be at Phakisa in Welkom on the 26 July 2008. The Vox Racing Yamaha team has had great success there this season with three wins overall already.