Fourie satisfied with Kyalami outing
Johan Fourie went into the Kyalami event with the aim of scoring as many points as possible and finishing every race.
Whilst it was a tough event, the Indy Oil crew was satisfied to have achieved this goal.
It was always going to be a rough weekend and Fourie knew that he was on the back foot needing to dust off last year's Audi A4. Despite
this, the team faced the event with enthusiasm and walked away third overall for the day.
Friday's practice sessions demonstrated that last year's Class A status quo is still prevalent with the BMW 335is topping the timesheets
in all three sessions, and this trend continued into Saturday's qualifying. Fourie struggled during the session, qualifying down in seventh
place.
Fourie had a good start to the first race, passing Marco da Cunha (Nissan) on the first lap. A touch between Michael Stephen (Audi) and
Tschops Sipuka (Audi) presented Fourie with enough of a gap to sneak into fourth place, a position he held to the finish line.
The second race began from a six-position, inverted grid, leaving Fourie in third position. The rolling start favoured the BMW and Subaru
which blitzed everyone off the line to take up the first two positions, relegating Fourie down to fifth place. Not having the outright pace
and still nursing his leg, Fourie decided to take a more demure approach to the race and finished fifth.
The new four-race format meant that Fourie had to face another set of back-to-back races, but so far the Audi was consistent and
reliable.
The grid for the third race was based on race one lap times and this system saw Fourie placed fifth on the grid.
Melvill Priest (BMW) spun off the circuit at the start and Fourie was happy to claim fourth place. While he tried to defend this
position, he slowly lost ground and eventually settled for sixth.
The top eight finishing positions were then inverted for the fourth-race grid, which saw Fourie secure third place on the start line.
Whilst most of the race weekend had been incident free, the start of the final race was absolute carnage. Taylor (BMW), Sipuka (Audi),
Groenewald (Subaru), Stephen (Audi) and Fourie all tangled into turn one, leading to the race being stopped.
Fourie found himself doing some impromptu panel-beating on the start line, worried that the dent on his front left fender was going to
damage his tyre. Fortunately he managed to pull the bodywork out of the way and although the bump threw out the Audi's wheel alignment, he
was able to continue the race.
When the race finally got under way, Fourie was in third position. He later lost the position to Richard Pinard (Subaru), but held onto
fourth place to the finish line.
"We knew it was going to be a difficult weekend, but I was able to finish every race," commented Fourie. "I got through
three out of four races without any damage to my car which I am very happy about. We are now going to work flat out to get the S4 ready for
competition. At this stage however, it is more important to get some points than none, so we need to make sure that the car is fault free
before taking to the track."
The progress of work on the S4 will be watched with much interest as the countdown to Killarney on 2 April begins.