Williams hits top gear at Phakisa
Jon
Williams is to swop his Ford Fiesta rally car for the more
civilised environment of the Phakisa race circuit outside Welkom where he
will experience the cauldron that is the Bridgestone Production Car
Championship.
Williams will share Richard Pinard's Sasol Subaru WRX STI in a unique
two-hour endurance race, gaining a taste of the highly-competitive and
sometimes bruising series that thrills fans around the country.
Pinard's team mate Hennie Groenewald leads the championship with an
11-point advantage, and Pinard and Williams' role will be to get as high up the
order as possible to take points away from Groenewald's rivals.
Cape Town-based Williams is no stranger to the black stuff, having
started his racing career in 100cc karts at the tender age of 10. By the
time he had finished his school career he took to the tracks in a Ford
Ikon, winning races in classes C and D, twinning his season with his gravel
debut in a class A6 Toyota Conquest.
Rallying quickly became Williams' first choice of motorsport and he won the
2005 Western Cape Regional Rally Championship, successfully defended the
following year, where he also competed in class A7 in the national series.
2007 brought Williams into rallying's top S2000 class, where he ended fifth
overall behind the four factory crews. With a World Rally Championship drive
in prospect if he could win the African leg of the Pirelli Star Driver
Challenge, Williams headed to the FIA African Rally Championship, taking
victories in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Zambia, enough to earn a seat in selected
rounds of the WRC.
Two wins, two seconds and a fourth place in the tough World Rally
Production Car arena saw Williams clinch the Pirelli Star Driver Championship,
for which he received his national colours in 2010.
After a two-year hiatus, he made his comeback in 2011 behind the wheel
of his Sasol Ford Fiesta, where he lies seventh overall after three
rounds, just one point adrift of the reigning champion Enzo Kuun.
Williams had a test session in the Subaru on Monday ahead of the
Phakisa race meeting and in seven laps was setting competitive times.
"I didn't do anything special, just find out where the buttons are
and so on," he said. "The Subaru's power and grip levels are
astonishing and the WRX STi is easily the most powerful car I have raced. To
get the best out of it, you need to be precise, choose your line and stick
to it, then boot the power out of the corners. The seating position is going
to be a compromise between myself and Richard but we'll work through that.
I'm really looking forward to the weekend and trying not to think too much
about how it will be when ten similar cars are going for the same piece of
road!"
Williams will be in action in two back-to-back sprint races at
13h00 and 13h30, with the feature two-hour sprint race starting at 16h00.
