Suzuka next weekend sees the Intercontinental GT Challenge visit its fourth continent of the 2019 season after races at Bathurst, Laguna Seca and the Spa 24 Hours in Belgium. Thereafter the focus will shift to the ‘new kid on the block’ for the IGTC’s African debut, the revival of the historic Kyalami 9 Hours.
And happily there’s to be at least one neat link between the 2019 race, and the 1969 running of the then Rand Daily Mail 9 Hours as the winning squad’s moniker, Team Perfect Circle, is adopted by the first confirmed local entry for the race.
Back in 1969 the near all-while Porsche 917 of Team Perfect Circle took the race win with Dickie Attwood and David Piper, amongst the crowd that year was Andre Bezuidenhuit, now a successful locally based gentleman driver, but then a highly impressionable eight-year-old boy!
In 1969, his father took him to watch the Kyalami 9h. That race had an incredible influence on Andre as it started a lifelong passion for motorsport and for Porsche.
The announcement that the event was to be revived started a programme to be a part of it, Andre’s normal racing beat in hillclimbing (driving everything from Porsches to his Lola or Gould GR55 single-seaters) giving way to the childhood passion.
He bought the 2012 British GT Championship-winning Porsche 911 GT3R, CORRECTION, it’s the Gregor Fisken Trackspeed car from 2013! (pictured top in 2019 form), now upgraded to 2014 spec and put in an entry for the race.
Here’s an excellent short film covering the shakedown of the team’s fully rebuilt car at Silverstone prior to its despatch to South Africa.
He also approached friends and fellow racers Franco and Silvio Scribante. The Scribante family own their own race circuit, the Aldo Scribante Circuit in Port Elizabeth. Franco is Andre’s closest rival at the Simola Hillclimb each year (Andre holds the track record there), but these racing rivals are coming together for the Kyalami 9h.
After discussions with David Piper the car is set to adopt the Perfect Circle Racing team name, and with both the number #9 and a livery paying tribute to that 1969 Porsche 917 too, truly a real ‘Perfect Circle’! Here’s a second film featuring the drivers, and David Piper looking back to that 1969 triumph.
What a lovely story, truly the spirit of endurance.
