Last week's opening round showed us that we have a very evenly matched group of racers competing in this racing series, which filled us with hope and confidence that we will see more of the same in all of the upcoming races. Race number 2 took our drivers to South Africa, albeit only virtually, to compete at a former home of the South African F1 Grand Prix, Kyalami. The name of the circuit is derived from 'khaya lami' which means 'my home' in Zulu. It is a super technical track, with some big overtaking opportunities, which promised us some great racing action!
The weather forecast before the start of the race, or qualifying for that matter, didn't look all that good, with quite high chance of rain throughout the race weekend. We did see some clouds covering up the sun during qualifying and in the race itself as well, but in the end, it stayed dry for the duration of the whole race weekend. This time around the drivers had a 90 minute race ahead of them, so any weather changes could have only made the race even more exciting and unpredictable.
As we have seen last week, qualifying, in both classes, was super tight. All of the drivers, let it be in the Gold or the Silver class, have put in some great lap times. Like we already mentioned before, the whole grid was super close, the difference between P1 and P32, the last car on the grid, was 2.7s. Which in hindsight sounds quite a lot, but losing that much time over a minute and 40-ish second lap, that is not too bad!
The overall pole position time, as well as in the Gold class, was set by Hugo Boucher, with a lap time of 1:40.267, which was nearly 2 tenths quicker than what Olivier Breniaux (1:40.440) was able to achieve in that qualifying session. Damien Bosc found himself in third place, after taking pole last time around, with a lap time of 1:40.627. Our last week's winner, Abe Santema, managed to climb up to P5, with 1:40.872, just over 6 tenths of a second behind Boucher.
Over in the Silver class, we've seen Akos Szabo take pole position this time around as well, repeating the qualifying performance from round 1, setting a lap time of 1:41.037, exactly a tenth of a second quicker than second placed Yannis Bouguerra (1:41.137), our race winner from last week. Rounding up our top 3 in the Silver class we can find Jeff Buell, setting a 1:41.355 (+0.318), which put these 3 drivers 10th, 11th and 13th respectively on the overall standings.
The start of the race was extremely tight once again, the fact that we have a very slow and tight first corner, technically being turn 2, made the whole pack bunch up straight away. We've seen a great, and clean, lap 1, with close battles all over the place. There were some smaller incidents further down the order, but despite that, vast majority of racers made it through lap 1 with no major problems. Boucher and Breniaux took advantage of some side by side action from the cars behind, opening a slight gap at the front, which didn't last too long into the race, at least not for Breniaux. Over in the Silver class, Szabo managed to get a great opening lap under his belt, keeping the lead in the class ahead of Bouguerra and Buell.
After the drivers settled in, or at least it seemed that way, unfortunately we have seen one of the (first) bigger incidents of the race, with at least 7 cars being involved in the incident, or being affected by it. The second to last turn, otherwise known as Cheetah, proved to be quite deadly in this race, seeing many incidents happening in that corner. It is not difficult to hit the sausage kerb on the apex of Cheetah, which can really unsettle the car and launch it off into the gravel trap on the exit of the corner. We have seen many drivers fall victim to it throughout the race, unfortunately.
In the end, we have seen a rather convincing win from Hugo Boucher, leading pretty much the whole race, with Damien Bosc coming home in second, with an insane comeback from the very back of the grid after an incident on the opening lap! Completing the podium this time around was Abe Santema, who finished second on the road, but a post race penalty from our stewards meant a loss of one position, and getting that third step on the podium. Over in the Silver class, We have seen the same 2 drivers occupying the top steps of the podium as last week, with Yannis Bouguerra taking the win once again, followed by Akos Szabo in second, and Alexandre Carlier in third.
With that, we come to the end of our second race week, we have already seen plenty of action in these first couple of races, with a lot more of it still to come after a week's break, with a one-off special happening instead, just to have some more fun on track without worrying about overall results. You can check the details of that event over on our SimGrid event page, as well as jump over to our YouTube channel to check out the highlights, as well as the full race stream replay from Kyalami! We will be back with the next round in about 10 days' time, this time heading to sunny Imola!