The Simola Hill Climb may just be the biggest motor-sport event in South Africa – at least measured by wide public interest.
The competitors range from young to quite a bit older, total amateurs to big time professionals and everything in between. The cars range from 1926 to 2024; that is almost 100 years, and the teams from factory-owned to a guy tinkering on weekends in his garage. It is motorsport magic and everybody has their space and time to shine.
One of the big sponsors of the weekend, Suzuki, also brought three Suzuki Sports to compete in Class A1 for standard production cars.
The Suzuki “Works” Media Team invited three drivers to show the hill what a Sport can do. Maroela Media’s Brendon Staniforth, TimesLive’s Thomas Falkiner and Wesley Greybe of Short Shift were the chosen three.
And what a squad they proved to be. The tall quiet assassin, Thomas quietly moving in for the kill. The calculated consummate pro, Wesley, biding his time and the bubbly fired-up Staniforth ready to go, go, go.
“All three drivers have racing experience, so we decided to put them in matching cars to level the playing field,” said Chelsy Pinto, assistant manager of product planning and sales development, and Suzuki Race team manager. “The results were even better than expected, with good old rivalry pushing all three drivers beyond the times we set in previous years.”
Staniforth worked for Helderberg Gazette a few years ago before crossing the Hex River after greener pastures up north. But hey, that’s okay, he is still one of us. All is forgiven.
He had quite an uphill (ahem) battle, as he had never driven a Sport before or any car at Simola for that matter. The other two had quite a few runs under the belt from previous years.
The trio enjoyed quite a ding-dong battle on Saturday, all the time trimming a second here or there. By the end of Saturday all three drivers had done the fastest times ever in Class A1 – a great achievement.
Falkiner set the record at 53.551 seconds during practice. In the final, he took top honours in their class with a time of 53.784. Both the other Suzuki Sports beat the 54 second mark as well.
The fastest entrant in the road and supercar category was P van der Walt in a Porsche 911 Turbo S with a time of 43.513 sec.
The oldest car in the event was the 1926 Austen Seven of Lucie Rennalls. The newest car was the 2024 BMW I5 M60 battery car driven by Deon Joubert. The loudest car was the Sasol Jordan 192 F1, which Stefano Modena drove at Kyalami in 1992 on a demonstration run. The Hart 1035 V10 engine at full song is a joy to hear. Almost a 100 years of motoring history.
The winner of the Single Seater, Sports Car and Sports Prototypes category and King of the Hill was Robert Wolk, in a specialised hill-climbing car, a Pillbeam MP58 with a Nissan Infinity Indycar V8 motor in a time of 37.133 seconds. That’s more than 1,9 km on a twisty uphill road, from a standing start.
Next year May will see the running of the 15th Simola Hill Climb in Knysna.
