Right, by popular demand, here it is!

Background info:

The gearbox is a Hewland LD200 4 speed box. I have the ratios for Kyalami in the garage, but I am not typing in the garage so I can?t tell you now. The clutch is only used to pull away, once the car is rolling all changes are done without using the clutch. Kyalami is an anti-clockwise circuit.

We leave the pits and cruise through a warm-up lap with our left foot on the brake pedal in an attempt to warm the pads (reasonably effective) whilst twirling the wheel like a mad conductor, reputedly in an effort to get the tyres (slicks) up to temperature. (Not so effective). We assume we arrive at the last corner before the pits with everything perfect.

On exiting the 90 degree left-hander in second gear we are on the right hand side of the tarmac. We accelerate hard and at the same time drift to the left of the track. The track runs slightly uphill to the start/finish line and you are looking down a 400m straight lined on both sides by walls that are about a foot higher than the top of your helmet. Blue Vodacom signs alternate with a number of lesser signs reflecting from the windows of the press facility on your right as you select third and try to hug the wall on your left, selecting fourth as you flash under the start lights. Just past the start/finish line the wall on your left abruptly disappear, the pitlane exit joins here and you run over the yellow exit lines and use the extra width of the track (pitlane exit lane) to set yourself up for the kink.

We are now running at +-120mph and we ease the car over to the right. By going wide into the pitlane exit we have straightened the kink and only a small deviation of the wheel are needed to send us running at 130mph with our right wheels on the concrete rumble strip into the looooonnnnnng and fast left-hander.

(Reality check: The fast guys go through here flat out! I confess to just backing off a tad before committing to the corner). One of the 2 orgasmic moments in the lap of Kyalami is now upon us! We ease the wheel to the left and aim for the apex of the corner just a bit behind the marshal stand. The initial part of the corner is off- camber so you feel yourself sliding out to the right and the biggest run-off area you have ever seen. If you are righteous and have eaten your Kellogg?s this morning, you will get it all and feel the sideways loads building, your helmet is dragging to the right and your hands are clenched on the wheel as the speed builds up and you know that all that stand between you and a world of hurt is the machine you feel underneath you, and the tarmac becomes a blur and you pray that you will never kill any more kittens, but please God! Just let me exit this one in one piece ok and the corner is still curving to the left and as you KNOW you are going to have the mother of all crashes, the corner ends and you are rushing at a double left-hander only 60m away! (If you ever go off here, do not fight the car, let it run into the run-off area, trying to save a mishap here puts you into the inside Armco which is about 6 ft from the track and at 150+mph you are going to notice the impact.)

We approach the first of the 2 Nashua?s (name of the corner) aiming to run the left front wheel over the slight hump formed where the tarmac meets the cement of the rumble strip. We brake hard to bleed speed before we drop to third gear as we slide over the target with the left front and dial in a tad of left steer to get a sideways component to our motion and jump on the brakes again, let the speed bleed off and select second and aim for the apex of the second left-hander and we feed in the power and if we judged it correctly, the right rear will kick up a puff of dust from the right hand side of the track as we exit into the old pit straight. This little complex of 2 corners have caught many a professional, the best attempt at f**king this up was executed by Ricardo Patrese in a Bennetton. I stand in awe.

We are now on historic ground. This is part of the original Kyalami and as we accelerate the exhaust roar gets magnified by the buildings (old F1 pits- now hospitality and medical facilities) as we move up through the gears and position ourselves on the left hand side of the track just before we enter Sunset corner.

Sunset is named Sunset as in the winter months the setting sun shines right into your eyes and just about blinds you. We wait for the start of the patch in the tar, apply some brake and select third as we turn right and apex and feed in to power. This is a normally uneventful 90-degree right hand corner, although I have managed to induce some cool spins here. On exiting we keep on going right whilst we travel down a short straight to position for the next 90 degree left, named Club.

About 50% of all overtaking done at Kyalami is done in the braking zone for Club corner. It is a second gear corner so the transit speed is not high but the approach is done at +-100mph so there is ample opportunity for heroics. But I digress?

We brake for Club, select second and turn into the 90-degree left-hander. As we are not racing, just driving we take the fastest line as we do not need to defend against some dickhead trying to out-brake us. The speed is quite low but we build up quickly on the exit and select third in the run into the esses.

The esses now looms, we look at the marshal stand out of the corner of our eyes as we brake, select second and turn left as the track drops about 10 feet in elevation and we feel the car bottoming out as we turn into the right hand part of the esses, and allow the car to run to the left of the track as we start the laborious climb up the hill to Wesbank, whilst burying the throttle.

Wesbank is technically a hairpin, but actually it is 2 corners closely spaced together but you do need to take into account the double apex you will need to execute if you want to exit with speed, and that is IMPORTANT. We are in fourth climbing up to Wesbank, and as the road flattens over the so-called tabletop, we brake at the change in tarmac (A patch was done here a few years ago, giving the perfect brake marker for our cars. You go balls to the wall ?till the tar change, then you brake like there is no tomorrow!) As the speed decays, we select second and turn left from a wide and what appears to be a late turn in point, but as we gain speed, we see that the wide/late entry has allowed us to apex the first part of the corner and allows us to apex the second part whilst still hard on the gas!

The second orgasmic moment at Kyalami now offers itself up to be enjoyed. We are in a rapidly accelerating car traveling in a straight line and we are going downhill down a straight aptly named ?the mineshaft? as the road just falls down the hillside and we are madly changing gears trying to stop the engine from over-revving and the speed is building and we are doing just under 160mph when we enter a left curve and the G?s build and you feel the suspension working. I do not know the name of this curve as it is the corner before the bowl and the bowl grabs all your attention as you realize you are moving sideways through this curve and just there in front of you is a 90 degree right-hander and OH MY GOD I CANNOT BRAKE YET AS I AM ALL SLIDING AND THE BOWL IS COMING, LOOMING EVER NEARER and THIS F*CKING CAR WON?T GO STRAIGHT SO I CAN APPLY BRAKES and f**k the walls on the other side of the bowl looks very solid and there is now not enough road left BUT THANK GOD THE CAR IS JUST ABOUT STRAGHT and I am GOING to BRAKE NOW.

Somewhere into the approach to the bowl you find enough road to brake,( but you did try to push the brake pedal through the bulkhead, thank the Lord for downforce) and gear down to second and look in the mirrors and watch the crowd in the stands and after turning right and moving to the left of the track now running peacefully next to beautiful maintained grass fit for a picnic in the best English tradition, you ask yourself: ?Why did I think I was going to run out of road at the bowl?? (Every race meeting a number of competitors do).

We charge up the straight to the chicane, and where the wall on the right changes from blue to yellow, at that precise spot, we brake hard and change down to second and turn right into the chicane AND WHERE DID THE ROAD DISSAPPEAR TO?
The chicane is an abomination perpetuated on the South African racing community by an insane British Naval Commander who designed this whilst he was high on smoking his socks. f**k him! You turn left and slither through the chicane like a snake on crack and get the nose straight and pointed into Bungie corner and accelerate as hard as you can and rush up to Bungie and brake as late as you dare (there is NO run off at Bungie, just very hard walls). We gear down to second and turn left 90 degrees and get the pedal down and we are on the main straight and the cycle starts all over again.

Regards
Riaan