The Supra is looking and sounding incredible! It has created quite a buzz in the pits for being a very cool younger racing classic. But also one with a brilliant story. Having been bought for the price of an iPhone. And then built in 6 months by us 4 morons… but mostly Nico. There are some incredible cars here. And it quickly becomes apparent that our relatively stock Supra, is unlikely to be competing at the top of our class. Because the Supra has a roll cage and is not road-legal, it has to compete in the “Race Cars – 6 cylinders and up”. Which puts it in the same class as fully prepped racecars with 4 times our horsepower. In fact, 3 of the top 10 cars on Classic Friday, are IN OUR CLASS!
Simola, however, is not racing on a racetrack. It’s a public road, with little run-off, poor drainage and a changing, uneven surface. As it happens, today, it also has rain. Lots of rain. With some of the racecars running full slick tyres, we might get lucky with our standard Road tyres!? Well, if we’re honest, they are ex-9-hour-lemons-tyres!
Let’s just go racing!
So, we pumped Nico full of brave-pills, shoved him in the car and he sent it. The Supra sounds brilliant screaming off the line with the turbos hissing away at the front. Off the line it looked quick. Despite the fact that he had NEVER driven the car in anger before, Nico was not holding back. The Supra has never been on a dyno, so we think she’s overfueling towards the higher rev ranges. And so, short-shifting. On a wet track, with old tyres. In an untested car, on a course he’s never driven before. With the Supra that cost less than one of the wheels on the Porsche he was racing against – Nico was up against it, and he delivered. The Supra kept getting better and faster! Nico got more confident and when the track finally dried a little bit, he put in a very impressive 1:01:339.
Of course after that, we did lose the use of first gear and the diff stopped diffing…. But we’ll gloss over that. Nico simply switched to launching in second gear and not relying on the LSD to L the S in the D.
Nico’s time was good enough for 6th place in his class. But if we were comparing his times to other cars that had more similar specifications, in those classes, he did incredibly well. We couldn’t be more impressed with the Supra’s racing performance and the fact that it even made it there!
Chapter 5 – Getting Ready for Racing – King of the Hill
Perfect Planning Prevents Poor Performance. Words Andre lives by. So of course he pretty much picked up his car from a brand new clutch installation the day before we left Somerset West. He also missed most of Classic Friday! Because he was getting new tyres fitted to his car in town. And getting stickers printed to make it look like a racecar. Let no one ever accuse us of doing anything last-minute.
Saturday comes around quicker than you know. Suddenly we’re strapping Andre into his Alfa 4C for his first practice run. Following heated debates as to weather or not he should be using launch control, we send him out for his first run. The road is still a little greasy from yesterday’s rain, but a line is starting to dry out. The 4C is a quick little sportscar, however, once again, the competition in this class is fierce.
Other cars entered into Andre’s Modified Road car class include an Audi RS3 capable of over 1000hp! Also an R34 Skyline GTR with 850HP-WP on the license plate – so we’re guessing it probably makes some ponies.
Andre’s first run was quite impressive, given that he had also never driven this course, other than on a simulator. Going through the speed trap at the top of the long straight at over 170kph, we were actually very surprised how close he was to the cars with FAR more horsepower than his. However, on the second run, disaster struck. Niel and I were watching from the grass between the start line and turn 2 when Andre flew past. Suddenly as he was disappearing from view, we heard the revs shoot up and hit the limiter. Then smoke poured out the back of the car….
Chapter 6 – Getting Fixed
My immediate reaction was that the new clutch had failed and thus left the car with no drive. This would have been terminal and unlikely to be resolved in time for a qualifying run. Luckily, it turned out to be a hydraulic problem, but still left the car immobile and stuck in 4th gear.
Being fellow Alfa Romeo Racers, the fantastic crew from Stelantis lent us their chief mechanic who diagnosed the problem as a hydraulic hose coupler that had popped off. The problem was that it couldn’t simply be reattached. It would require a very specific circlip and the correct hydraulic fluid to get the car moving again. Where do you find those on a Saturday afternoon?
Stelantis to the Rescue
Again it was Stelantis to the rescue. A few frantic phone calls later the required parts and fluids were tracked down at a workshop in George – about 70km away. Janus, from Stelantis handed Andre the keys to their support car, a Jeep Wrangler, and off he went! This gave the rest of us some time to actually enjoy watching some of the hillclimb!
A shorter than expected amount of time later – Andre arrives back with the required bits… we assume he must have been racing from Knysna to George via Mexico to make such excellent time. Once again, the Alfa Chief Mechanic, Keith, jumped into action and scurried to get Andre’s car sorted in time for another run. Unfortunately he missed the last runs by about 10 minutes, but at least the car was now working and we could do a few test runs in the evening to make sure everything was 100%.
Some photographs on this page appear courtesy of CLR Photography.
If you missed chapters 1-3 of our Simola Hillclimb Adventures, >CLICK HERE< to read all about it.