SRWC Round 10 – Kyalami: Lavaggi on pole

And with newly crowned champions JMB Giesse choosing not to make the journey, it was former F1 driver Gianni Lavaggi, driving the GLV Brums Ferrari, who captured pole for Sunday's race.

With the titles in both classes decided at the previous round, by JMB Giesse and Redman Bright in the Lights category, the field has been left somewhat depleted. However, the seven SR cars and four Lights have been joined by six cars from the Westbank V8 Challenge and eight from the Vodacom Sports Prototype series, making for a healthy grid.

Local hero Gary Formato, a race-winner earlier this season in the R&M Riley&Scott, is racing alongside rapid German Ralf Kelleners in the Roush-powered Kremer Lola B98, and set the fastest times in the free practice sessions.

However, in qualifying, a spectacular last-minute effort from Lavaggi placed the GLV Brums car half a second faster, claiming pole ahead of the South African. "It was a very hard lap, the track is very slippery and it is difficult to know exactly where the limit is," Lavaggi said afterwards.

Formato - who won the Kyalami round back in 1998 in Philippe Gache's Solution F Riley and Scott - remains confident for Sunday's race. "It's a long race tomorrow, and I am confident that we have a great race set-up. It will be a very close four-way battle in the race, and the fact that it is in the morning in cooler conditions could make the opening laps very entertaining indeed."

John Nielsen will start from third place in the Den Bla Avis Panoz Spyder LMP, just ahead of BMS Scuderia Italia's Peter Philipp, who had swapped fastest times with Formato at the beginning of the session.

Pole in the Lights category went to the Stanley Dickens and Fredrik Ekblom on their SRWC debut, in the Nissan-powered Sportscar Racing Team Sweden Lola B2K 40, relegating the new Redman Bright champions, Smithson and Owen, to second place. "The car feels really stable out there, and finding a base set-up has been no problem," said Ekblom - a former Le Mans competitor with Courage.


Pos/#/Driver/Team/Car/Time
1 3 Lavaggi/Filliberti GLV Brums Ferrari 333SP 1:36.126
2 10 Kelleners/Formato Kremer Lola B98 Roush 1:36.796
3 8 Nielsen/Elgard DenBlaAvis Panoz Spyder LMP 1:36.624
4 23 Zadra/Peter BMS Ferrari 333SP 1:36.939
5 21 Goddard/Ayari Durango GMS LMP1 Mader 1:37.575
6 22 Calderari/Bryner/Zadra BMS Ferrari 333SP 1:38.651
7 18 Smith/tba Simpson Matrix XP Nissan 2:17.184


1 76 Dickens/Ekblom SRTS Lola B2K 40 1:41.648
2 63 Owen/Smithson Redman Br. Pilbeam MP84 1:42.159
3 71 Careca/Wiseman Project Tampolli RS-RT 1:44.464
4 72 Randaccio/Perazza SCI Lucchini AF 1:45.135