Rotax Euro Challenge Round 4 – Genk, Belgium 15,16,17 & 18 September 2005

If there is anybody anywhere in Rotax Land who doesn’t know which Nation dominates this particular category of World Motor Sport, then they should have been at this meeting. Out of a total of just over 100 entrants from 5 different continents, it was South African drivers who won the 3 Finals, and for good measure, took 2 of the 3 Euro Challenge Titles for 2005. 

Pride of place should go to Cristiano Morgado who not only won both the pre-final and Final of RM-1 Class at the meeting, but also the Euro Challenge title with a near perfect score. He had won all Pre Finals and was denied a 100% score only when a puncture intervened in the Final at Round 3 in Austria. In fact such was the former World Champion’s dominance that his only other anxiety at these meetings has been how many more stray dogs would he find that his Mum had taken in when he got back home !

Having doubled up in Rotax Senior class as well, he completed an excellent weekend with 3rd place in this Final, and a 5th place overall in the championship Current World Champion Wesleigh Orr who had had

such incredible bad luck when scoring nothing at all in the previous round, nevertheless served notice that he is just as good as his World Champion tag suggests, by winning the Final, and finishing 6th overall despite the disasters in the UK and Austria.

Given that we already know how good are Morgado and Orr, perhaps the best performance was that of young Arnold Neveling who went to the Junior Final as one of 5 drivers capable of winning the title. He drove a superb race from the second row of the grid to take an early lead which he never relinquished. His prize was the Euro Challenge Junior Title which also carried an invitation to the Red Bull Young Driver Search meeting at the F1 circuit in Estoril, Portugal in October.

Neveling, Orr and Morgado all qualified for the Rotax World Challenge Finals in Langkawi, Malaysia in November.

With all this South African dominance, can you believe that the one National Anthem missing at Genk was the South African one. Yours truly had had to line up Rui Morgado, Giovanni Piazza Musso, Hugh Orr and Benni Neveling to gather around the commentator’s microphone to sing the National Anthem the 5 times it was needed. Fortunately for them, (and the assembled gathering ? ) a CD was found in time and at the end of the presentation ceremony there couldn’t have been anybody present from any country unable to hum the entire South African National Anthem after 5 airings!

Wayne Riddell was not too impressive in the early stages of the RM-1 competition but saved his best form for the final where he finished 6th. Raymond Johnson was 27th in the Junior Pre-Final but climbed to a praiseworthy 17th in the Final on his international racing learning curve.

The series commentator has sometimes wondered if he overdoes the praise for his South African friends. This meeting vindicated everything he has ever said or written.