I cannot remember the last time I saw so many spectators, fans, and petrol heads all in one place watching fuel being burnt, tyres being melted into the tarmac and bumper to bumper action trading paint on a race circuit. This weekend’s Extreme Festival was probably as Extreme as it has been for a while now.
We South Africans have always had a passion for motorsport, and with all that has been happening outside of racing and with current politics lately, it was a breath of fresh air to see so many people attend this weekend’s Extreme Festival at the iconic Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit in Gauteng.
In uncertain times, most people or corporations tend to cling to their every last penny, but for others, it’s those exact moments where they step in to inspire and help those who have vision and to show the rest how a positive mindset can push things forward. We are talking about Liqui Moly South Africa…
In the eleven racing categories on the racing program, Liqui Moly was present in almost all of them, either sponsoring athletes or teams. What grabbed our attention over the weekend were the three Liqui Moly-sponsored Pablo Clark cars racing in the BMW Performance Parts Race Series, Jagger Robertson from the Chemical Logistics WCT Engineering Sparco Volkswagen Golf in SA Touring Cars and Damian Hammond racing the fully wrapped in Liqui Moly livery Samlin Racing Lamborghini in the Extreme SuperCars driven by Dunlop.
An exciting programme that Liqui Moly has gotten involved in is Pablo Clark’s Motorsport Development Programme, which focuses on bringing up the next generation of racers. This programme sees four novice drivers get behind the wheel of four identical BMW E46 development cars that have been stripped down to around 1200 kg, race-prepped in typical Pablo Clark high-quality, I mean, there’s no five-second rule, you can eat off these cars, and they are all in various stages of evolution—as one drivers feedback comes in a vehicle gets modified and taken to the next evolution for the rest of the team to benefit at a later stage. Drivers Stefano Cavalieri, Chloe Stuart, Karabo Malemela and Kent Swartz all bring their own unique character and soul to the team.
For now, top performing results aren’t the team’s main objective; after all, it is a development programme. What Pablo Clark is most interested in is development, getting the drivers up to speed, having fun, and in the end, they want more drivers to join and benefit from this fantastic initiative. What we’re most excited to see unfold over the season is how the drivers and cars start to slowly progress and witness how the racing bug starts to draw the drivers more into the sport.
Talking about development programmes and rookies, Jagger Robertson, the reigning Investchem Formula 1600 champion, has recently been confirmed to take part in this year’s season of South African Touring Cars, after a surprising Cape outing. The rookie or champ shall we say, has very quickly gelled with a whole new air sucking fuel dumping monster that is the CLR WCT Golf GTI touring car. The focus, the knowledge, and the want to consistently improve, by either understanding the car better by helping build the car himself or by looking at the race data and appologising to the team because he could have improve a millisecond “here and there” is seriously impressive, it’s the makings of a champion, not a rookie.
At Kyalami, Jagger qualified fifth, but in his own words, he was disappointed because he had the pace to qualify much higher up—a perfectionist will always be hard on themselves. The rest of the weekend looked up after the car setup was adjusted, seeing him make a good start in the first race, leaping into third off the line and maintaining the gap driving around whatever the car threw at him.
On the reverse (race 2), Jagger got off to an even better start, but had to manoeuvre the Golf around a bit of chaos around him to slot into a comfy second. After the points of the day were tallied up, this slotted Jagger into second overall. Jagger Robertson: “I would like to say, thanks to Stuart and my great WCT Engineering team for a brilliant car. Now it’s onward and upward to Aldo Scribante!”
We definitely see Jagger ruffling some feathers and fighting for the championship, right down to the wire this year, with his great skill and motivation, and also a fantastic team and sponsors like Liqui Moly that will see him through.
The top guns of the show have to be the Dunlop Supercars, they look like stealth fighters, corner as if they are on rails, and boy, are they loud. Liqui Moly’s top gun has to be Damian Hammond in the Samlin Racing Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO. Damian and his team are known for their impressive performances in the Endurance racing series and in the 1-Hour Dash Championship. Come race day and the top gun was wrapped in a Liqui Moly livery ready to take on the competition.
Damian’s race weekend started with a tough qualifying session due to some hiccups in the tyre selection, which ended up placing him 6th on the grid (2nd in class), further back than he’d like to be from the action. Race one went well as he got off the line with a good launch and slotted right behind the maiden trio that was Bradley Liebenberg in his Audi R8 LMS GT3 EVO, Ryan Naicker in the Mercedes-AMG GT3 and Jonathan du Toit’s in the Lamborghini Huracan GT3 EVO. Damian later ran into some braking issues and lost track of the front-running GT3 group and consolidated for a decent 4th.
Race 2 saw Samlin change the brakes on the Lambo to try and fix the braking problem from race 1. Unfortunately, Damian still had to battle with ABS issues throughout the race, seeing him have a similar outcome to race one, but still coming across the line as the Class B winner. Overall, this was a good result for a team and driver as they have been focused and very competitive in the Endurance series, and now they’ve just shown everyone how competitive they can be in a sprint.
We look forward to hearing more behind the scenes from Liqui Moly’s sponsored teams and athletes as the rest of the season unfolds. Next up, the third round of the 2025 National Extreme Festival presented by Coca-Cola heads to Aldo Scribante racetrack in Gqeberha for its next appointment on Saturday, 10 May.
For more information on Liqui Moly products, visit: www.liqui-moly.co.za
