Killarney, Cape Town (August 4, 2007)
An incident filled day marked the Bridgestone Production Car races at Killarney in Cape Town on a brilliant early spring day in front of an enthusiastic crowd with a mixed bag of results and some personal triumphs and disappointments.
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The Sasol Nissan 350Z squad had a much more successful outing at the Western Cape circuit, going home with the second race victory after much debating by the officials.
The second half of race one became a procession of 3 Audis, 3 Nissans and 3 Subarus, with no changes to the final positions of Fourie, Melvill Priest and Shaun Watson-Smith (Audi A4 quattros) in the top three, Leeroy Poulter, Gary Formato and Tschops Sipuka next in the Nissans. Priest was later disqualified for jumping the start and everyone behind Fourie was moved up one position, putting Poulter 3rd, Formato 4th and Sipuka 5th.
The grid for the second race was determined by using the fastest lap times achieved in race one, but reversing the order of the top 8. This put Formato on second of first low, Sipuka and Watson-Smith on the second row, Poulter and Priest on the third row and Stephen and Fourie on the fourth row.
Stephen was black flagged after his car spilt oil on the circuit, forcing the safety car to slow down the field under yellow flag conditions .
Subject to appeal, the second race results were updated by Clerk of the Course Piet Swanepoel, who confirmed the marshals' decision to exclude Stephens from the results. The Audi driver allegedly ignored the black flag and continued racing, crossing the line ahead of the field only to be excluded from the provisional results.
But that was not the end of it. By the end of the day Audi had not protested the Stephens decision, but challenged Swanepoel for demoting Watson-Smith, who crossed the line in second position ahead of Formato and Poulter, to second place. The reason of a protest by Poulter that Watson-Smith passed him under the yellow flag. Both protests will be heard in Johannesburg later in the week.
This however made Formato the winner of race two ahead of Watson-Smith, with Poulter third.
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