KART SHOOT-OUT A DAMP SQUIB

The shoot-out between Claudio Piazza-Musso in a Rotax Max 125 and the might of South African track racing, scheduled for last Saturday’s Vodacom Power Tour round at Killarney, Cape Town, was called off.

The idea was to pit the kart against a Wesbank V8, a BMW Production sedan and Russell Wood on his 600 cc Yamaha Superbike. Unfortunately, nobody checked with Russell to see if this was A-okay.

“Russell came to me beforehand and said I was crazy to have agreed to the shoot-out” said Claudio. “The V8 was apparently a full 10 seconds quicker than all of us, thanks to its superior grip, and Russell didn’t fancy the idea of this V8 barrelling down on him as we approached the banked corner at the end of the back straight.”

The idea was to have all four vehicles dial in times, with the slowest vehicle (which would have been the kart at 1:28) start first, with a handicapper working out the gaps so that all four vehicles would race to the line.

The BMW driven by former karter Mike Briggs set a new proddie car lap record of 1:25,8 on Saturday, which is only three seconds quicker than the kart. The Bike would have been a good couple of seconds slower than the V8 time, which would be around the 1:14 mark, as the bike has a similarly massive top speed (around 260 km/h) but much less grip than the slick-shod V8.

The chances of the V8 running the bike off the track or running over the kart, were ” considerable”, according to Wood