Summarize

The fiercely competitive 2017 Jaguar Simola Knysna Hillclimb saw records broken in the three categories of the competition — the Road and Super Cars; Single Seaters and Sports Cars; and Modified Saloon Cars. 

Andre Bezuidenhout and his Dallara F189 Formula 1 emerged King of the Hill, breaking the overall record by almost a second as he blitzed the 1.9km climb course in 37.695 seconds — or an average speed of 181.456 km/h up the hill from a standing start.

Bezeidenhout actually stopped the clocks on 37.162 seconds in qualifying session, but was unable to repeat the feat in the colder final run. Outgoing champion Franco Scribante produced a 39.754 second run to take second in his Chevron with Robert Wolk w the Formula Renault V6.

Modified Saloon Car category saw an all-out battle between two former champions – the 2011 winner Wilhelm Baard and Des Gutzeit battled for Modified Saloon Car honours in their tuned Nissan GT-Rs, Baard ultimately emerging victorious as he decimated Gutzeit’s record in a scintillating 39.892 seconds.to beat Des and Anton Cronje’s Subaru to the win.

The Road and Super Car category saw a thrilling tussle between Reghard Roets and outgoing champion Jaki Scheckter’s 2017 Nissan GT-Rs and a pair of Jaguar F-TYPE SVR for American racing ace Randy Pobst and Jaguar’s Dawie Olivier. Roets came back from damaging the rear suspension of his GT-R on Friday to steal the honours in a road car record 44.766 seconds from Pobst and Scheckter.

Peter Kaye-Eddie was meanwhile awarded the Spirit of Dave Charlton floating trophy at the 2017 recognising his exceptional commitment to motorsport.