Three's A Charm

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, we headed to the Jaguar Simola Hillclimb to see André Bezuidenhout claim his third King of the Hill title.

- Wilhelm Lutjeharms

It was wet but the weather did not deter them. It was Saturday morning and all the drivers were suited up. One after the other, the valley below Simola Golf and Country Estate filled with the raw, metallic sound of machinery spinning away at the start of the 1,9 km stretch of tarmac up the hill.

In the first pits, Divan Luzmore and his team from GT ClubSport were busy checking André Bezuidenhout’s Gould GR55. After claiming King of the Hill in 2017 with his 1989 Dallara F1 car, André returned in 2018 with the Gould. These cars are purpose-built Hillclimb single-seaters manufactured in the UK and have won several hill climb championships. This purchase would prove to be one of the smartest decisions André has made in his amateur-racing career.

This year, the conditions were not conducive to setting ideal times, however. Each time the faster cars headed out, the weather turned foul, but André was calmer than I expected: “You need to be awake in the wet. If you are past a certain point of opposite lock with the rear wheels spinning, you will lose control in an instant. It will dry up soon and then we can start posting respectable times.”