The 2021 South African National Championship for Off-Road Nitro kicked off on Friday the 12th of March in the blue skies of the Highveld in Gauteng Pretoria situated at the Zwartkops Raceway track.
Nitro truggy class starting off with the first round of Qualifying on Saturday morning would see Murray Van Lelyveld take the win over Sohil Sugreem in 2nd place with Gavin Leisching in 3rd place.
Sunday would provide an exciting and tough 45 minute final with Murray Van Lelyveld leading the race for the first 30 laps with Brendan Du Preez making an early mistake to fall back to 5th place and had to work his way back in the first 5 laps with Brendon Van Staden and Jaco Taljaard fighting it out in front of him. Brendan Du Preez managed to catch up to the leader after 35 laps to take the lead with the back markers allowing for some nail biting action as the leaders sometimes had to hold their breath to make the pass.
Brendan Du Preez took the win at the end beating Murray Van Lelyveld to finish line by 2 laps followed by Brendon Van Staden finishing in 3rd place, also 2 laps behind who almost got taken out by Pieter Vermaak
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Nitro truggy results:
1. Brendan Du Preez - XRAY XT8
2. Murray Van Lelyveld
3. Brendon Van Staden
Electric Buggy Class with the top 3 runners on a 98% consistency it was hard to separate these 3 from one another but with Richard Duckham being 2 seconds faster on average per lap it was not possible for John Fitzsimmons and Zane Keogh to keep up who finished 2nd and 3rd respectively.
The final round of qualifying will see the guys from the first round back in action with Richard Duckham taking first place to TQ with John Fitzsimmons back in 2nd place followed by Zane Keogh in 3rd place.
With 2 rounds to count out of the 4 Richard Duckham took the TQ spot followed by Murray Van Lelyveld and John Fitzsimmons in 3rd position overall.
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Ebuggy results:
1. Murray Van Lelyveld 2. John Fitzsimmons XRAY XB8E
3. Richard Duckham
In the pro buggy class, 12 Year old Damian Howard whom started in 5th position would fight it out with Daniel De Azevedo for most of the race for 4th place and then end up taking the 3rd place.
