Greg Walker and the Shelby Can-Am in action - Image by Tony Alves

Greg raced at kyalami last weekend - here is the hot off the press update from Greg himself!

What a circuit, very technical with blind fast sweeps and entertainment bomas lining the track you feel as if you are driving into a funnel making it difficult to find braking points.

First practice session was spent finding out where circuit went. 2^nd session 50% was spent in the pits with a electrical problem and managed only 3 laps once problem was sorted but managed to drop lap times by 3 seconds. 3^rd session was even worse as the high pressure fuel pump which is located in the fuel tank seized so we had no track time in which to make changes to the car setup, that was all the free practice we had available before qualifying. We then made adjustments (thumb suck) to give the car more stability through the fast sweeps, put a new set of boots on the car and went for it in qualifying after getting some pointers from Darren Lobb and improved our pace by a further 3 secs and placing 10^th on the grid for Saturdays race. One thing I have experienced is the willingness of the Shelby CanAm drivers to impart information to newcomers like myself and our race engineer Ian Smith is a star and doing his best to give me what I feel I need in terms of setup.

Race day and the nerves working overtime, in the first heat made up a couple of places and then made a pig’s ear in the tight righthander after the mineshaft by putting the left rear on the astro turf and throwing it off the road and letting all those past that I had previously overtaken and finishing 10^th.

Second heat was to prove a lot better and a lot busier as at certain circuits the second heat is run combined with the GT cars which include Porches, Ferrari’s etc, really quick race machines, we lined up 16^th on the grid (grid decided by fastest lap in previous heat, CanAm and GT combined). Dicing with these machines was awesome but following a Ferrari is like driving behind a giant vacuum cleaner without a dust bag fitted, those rear diffusers are so effective that that pick up the finest and not so fine grit and throw it in your face if you are too close, in this race 3 Ferrari’s were destroyed in separate incidents (hope those guys have a close relationship with their bank managers). At the chequred flag we were positioned 9^th overall and 6^th in the Shelby CanAm class and finished 6^th overall for the day. All in all I was satisfied with the result for a first visit to Kyalami and look forward to Phakisa in Welkom on the 20^th June.

We are now after three rounds of the Pro Tour series lying 10^th overall and first in the Masters class (drivers 50 and older).

Two good web sites to view are www.shelbycanam.co.za and www.pro-tour.co.za