2014 Formula Ford champion Scott Temple in action
THE 2015 South African Single-Seaters (SASS) championship gets underway at Zwartkops Raceway on Saturday, March 21, round two of the Extreme Festival. This season the SASS field will be made up of the Formula Ford Duratecs on the national front and the Formula Ford Kent Regional Championship.
The event will mark the return of exciting and close open-wheel racing to the national motorsport scene this season. The 2015 debut for the SASS racers has an entry list of around 15 competitors taking to the starting line for that first event – with more expected as the racers get organised for the year.
“This season we’re streamlining the SASS championships,” says series co-ordinator Ian Schofield. “Instead of running multiple categories in the national formula, we’ll be concentrating on the Formula Ford Duratecs as the feature single-seater formula in South Africa. This will allow all competitors to race on an equal footing with the spectators easily able to follow the racing instead of having to focus on multiple classes in each race.”
“This does mean that not all of our national competitors will be on the starting grid from the first round, while they set up for the change in series,” says Schofield. “Once the field of competitors is complete the racing this year should be some of the best we’ve experienced in single-seater racing in South Africa.”
The field will comprise both the F1600 and Formula Volkswagen racers of last year, combining both into one overall field of competition for the 2015 season.
Heading up the field of Formula Ford Duratecs will be Nicholas van Weely (1), the Formula Volkswagen champion of 2014. He will be joined by Robert Wolk (41) and Werner Scholtz (3) who finished second and third respectively in this category in 2014. Van Weely and Wolk were involved in a tough battle last season with the last round proving to be the deciding factor for the championship title.
The 2014 season was marked by battles throughout the single-seater fields, with no single racer having an easy, unchallenged season. Whether the leading racers, the mid-pack fighters or the back-pack warriors, the single-seater competitors were regularly involved in on-track battles for position.
With the seven-round championship for 2015, the promise of more wheel-to-wheel action from the single-seater championship looks assured with plenty of hard racing awaiting spectators.
The SASS competitors will tackle two races at the Zwartkops round, with an eye on opening their personal score sheets for the year as the battle starts to find a new champion in South African open-wheel racing.