Technical issues saw team Backdraft from Prospecton only entering one of their three cars, the Backdraft 4000, which had run well up to the point that a side shaft snapped in the 101st lap with Martin Wright behind the wheel.
Midlands racers Mike Schmidt and Bruce Avern-Taplin again entered their plucky Corolla and Schmidt said the race produced all the drama that is normally associated with endurance racing. The team was quietly optimistic going into the start of the race, having improving with more than two seconds on their qualifying time from last year to start 23rd on the grid of 39 cars.
Avern-Taplin took the first shift and — as happens in racing — had an incident with a Porsche on the first lap which dropped him three places. He drove steadily to bring the car back to 23rd when Schmidt took over. Schmidt then drove hard and had the Corolla up in 12th position overall “when the clutch suddenly went to the floor”.
Schmidt continued with almost no clutch at all for the remainder of his stint. When the clutch failed completely he had to be towed from the outside of the circuit. The team replaced the defective clutch taking 90 minutes and in the true spirit of endurance racing, the Frankie’s Toyota rejoined the race, despite having no realistic chance of a decent result. The Corolla then lapped consistent times to finish with 122 laps.
A disappointed Avern-Taplin said next year the never-say-die attitude of this KZN team will certainly see them take a third crack at winning the African Six Hour’s sought-after Index of Performance award.
The Index win went to the Goldwagen Roodepoort Golf of Jannie van Rooyen, Adriaan Dalton and Gerhard Henning who had paced themselves behind the Frankies Corolla. They were followed home by the giant killing 1 600cc Ferodo Racing Golf of 17-year-old Kelvin van der Linde and 14-year-old brother Sheldon, who were 11th overall, six laps behind the bigger-engined Goldwagen entry.
2014 Six-hour race results:
1. Nick Adcock/Francis Carruthers/Dean McCarroll (Juno) 196 laps;2. Thomas Reib/Sean Greve (Shelby) 192 laps;
3. Andrew Strike/Des Gutzeit/Jade Gutzeit (Shelby) 187 laps;
4. Ian Smith/Stuart Mack/Elna Croeser (Shelby) 183 laps;
5. Alister Brown/Menno Parsons/Craig Shorter (Shelby) 181 laps;
6. Sun Moodley/Andrew/Culbert (Porsche 997 GT3) 180 laps.
