Summarize

Giordano Lupini enjoyed another great weekend at Killarney when he took a hard fought lights to flag second race win aboard the Bullion IT and Banhoek Chilli Oil Jetta in Saturday’s cheapercars.co.za GTi Challenge races at Killarney. Despite starting the season in the second round, Lupini has closed to within a few points of the class championship lead and fifth in the overall Challenge title race after eight races in the championship.

“We had another brilliant day with the Bullion IT and Banhoek Chilli Oil Jetta CLi today,” Giordano explained. “Nian and the team gave me the perfect car for qualifying, which allowed me to turn in an incredible qualifying lap — 1 minute 27.2 seconds is the fastest Class B lap ever at Killarney by over half a second! “Race 1 proved a bit of a struggle — the track temperature rose quicker than we’d catered for and Eden Thompson was really quick too and he managed to get ahead and try as I may, I could not get back past. “I did however manage an all-time B lap record in his tow.

“My race engineer Chase Herholdt and I then tried a couple of changes we had scheduled for our next test for race 2 and they seemed to work — I managed a lights to flag win with another fastest lap, but under constant pressure from Eden. “That was another brilliant, hard-fought couple of races — Eden took the day overall by less than a tenth of a second! 

“My pole and lap record bonus points however allowed us to provisionally close down to three points behind Eden in the class championship. “Eden has responded brilliantly to our challenge making our fight one of the focal points of the cheapercars GTi Challenge this year. Now we can’t wait for the next round when we plan to come back even better prepared. Thanks to all our sponsors and to Nian du Toit, Chase and the NDT team for a really great car.”