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Jurie ‘Umpie’ Swart enjoyed another brilliant Volkswagen Polo Cup weekend when he took his Alpine Autohaus Polo GTI to a lights to flag victory off pole position with the fastest lap in Saturday afternoon’s 30-minute endurance race. It was also Swart’s third win in six 2021 races of the national championship one race series as the Cape Town youngster continues in his privateer campaign against multi-car upcountry team rivals.

“That was almost the perfect weekend,” a delighted Umpie admitted after the race. “Best of all is that we've been struggling with my tyres going off through the races in a regular ten or twelve lap sprint, so I was expecting the worst from this race that ran more than double that distance. “Maybe it’s just a mental thing, although I think my sports car experience in the East London SA Endurance 4 Hour certainly helped me prepare for today, but the car was brilliant all the way.

“It wasn’t easy — Clinton Bezuidenhout was never much more than a second behind me, so the pressure was on all the way.” Unfortunately Umpie’s solid first race fifth came to nought to prevent a great overall haul. “I hit the push to pass on the first lap, which is not allowed and took a penalty which dropped us out the points. “That’s my bad and I take responsibility for it, but it's a pity because we lost a good bunch of points.

“I need to thank my biggest supporter and my greatest fan — my dad Jurie makes all my racing possible and the best way to repay his confidence is to win in the best class in South African racing. “Also thanks to my giant-killing Cape Town team, Andrew Goslett and GAP Motorsport for a brilliant car as always. "We have won half of the Polo races so far and we head to another neutral track at East London next in July, so we are pretty excited about our championship prospects too.”