Pushing limits at Kyalami with Toyota GR Cup Challenge

AS I pulled into the pits after the last race at the Kyalami Extreme Festival at the weekend, I couldn’t help smiling about the past three days’ activities and improvements.

- WILLEM VAN DE PUTTE

It was our second outing in the Toyota GR Cup Challenge and our last drive in the current Toyota GR Yaris for the Media Challenge before we switch to the new, more powerful and faster automatic GR Yaris with paddle shifters at the Aldo Scribante Raceway in Gqeberha in May. So Kyalami was a fitting farewell for the Independent Media/IOL car #60.

I had booked time with an instructor on the Simulator at the Toyota GR HQ at Zwartkops to get a feel for the iconic racing track with 16 corners and received a set of valuable notes on how to tackle the circuit. It helped a lot, but it’s almost an overload of information, and once we headed out of the pit lane for practice one, you remember only bits of it, so you concentrate on getting that right. Back in the pits, I went through the notes again.

I knew where I was losing time, braking too soon and too hard and realised I had to sacrifice time at the entrance to each corner to get a quicker exit. Then there’s a sweep called Mineshaft, after the sharp exit from Leeukop heading to what's called the Crocodiles.