Double wins for Thompson.
Lee Thompson and team mates Gennaro Bonafede and Kelvin van der Linde enjoyed a successful start to the 2011 WesBank Super Series national championship season at Kyalami on Saturday.
Thompson, competing in the Engen Volkswagen Cup Masters category (for drivers older than 27), which does not score championship points,
was in dominant form and won both races overall after drawing fifth and first starting positions respectively. The 31-year-old 2007 VW Cup
champion set the fastest lap in each outing.
van der Linde, at age 14 the youngest South African ever to contest a senior national championship circuit race, made an impressive debut
in the second car with two fourth places in the eight-lap races and third overall for the day behind Devin Robertson and Kyle Barnes in the
VW Cup competition (for drivers under 27 years of age). He received the accolade of Driver of the Day for his fine effort.
Despite a disappointing qualifying, which saw him start the first race from 11th overall on the grid and seventh in his category, van der
Linde battled his way into fifth overall and fourth in his category at the finish, recording the third-fastest lap in the process on the
penultimate lap.
After consistently posting second-best practice times behind team-mate Thompson on Friday, the grade 9 pupil's qualifying was spoilt by a
visit to the sand trap that resulted in a flat tyre after Thompson had gone off the circuit in front of him and dragged sand and grass on to
the tarmac.
Starting race two from seventh on the grid, van der Linde finished a very creditable sixth overall and fourth in the VW Cup category
after a coming-together with another competitor in The Bowl (turn 12) affected the handling of his car.
Bonafede, after qualifying his Ferodo VW Golf GTi third behind pole-sitter Graham Nathan (VW Golf GTi) and Gary Formato (Ford Fiesta ST),
scored three third places and a sixth in the new-format quartet of six-lap sprint races, the first two back-to-back and the second two
back-to-back. He was a disappointed fourth overall for the day.
A steady performance throughout the weekend and a probable third overall for the day behind Formato and Nathan was spoilt by an incident
in race two when he and Formato clashed on the second lap in The Kink (turn 13) and he suffered a flat front tyre after the valve was
knocked off. The 20-year-old Pretoria University engineering student had to call into the pits for a new wheel and lost a lap on the rest of
the field in the process.
The next round of the 2011 WesBank Super Series takes place at Killarney in Cape Town on 2 April.