Summarize

Chemical Logistics Racing emerged with a feature race win and second and third overall after an otherwise challenging weekend at Zwartkops’ mid-season South African Touring Cars round on Saturday. Keegan Campos put his BMW on pole position and won the opening race before ending fifth in a dramatic second heat to come home third overall. Julian van der Watt qualified third and ended third in both races to take third overall, while Jagger Robertson, Andrew Schofield and Siyabonga Mankonkwana had a little more to complain about of their Pretoria outings.

After missing the opening round, Touring Cars rookie and 2024 SATC SupaCup runner up Keegan Campos has won a heat in each of the three rounds since. Saturday was no different as the Campos Transport FAST Racing BMW 328tc man stormed to first race victory off pole position. “The weekend started so well, but the reverse grid second heat turned all that on its head,” Keegan admitted. “I was caught up in the turn 1 confusion and took my teammate Andy into the sand trap with me.

“That seemed to be that, but our incident saw the race red-flagged and the team did an incredible job to get both cars back on track in the few minutes they had to pull it off. My BMW was a bit wayward from there, but I still managed to fight back to fifth and ended up second overall for the day. “Unfortunately for the championship, that was second to championship leader Michael van Rooyen. The old man upped his game this weekend so it may not be all that easy to catch him after we missed a round, but hey, we’ll do our best. Well done to the team on another excellent effort!”

South African Touring Cars veteran Julian van der Watt enjoyed his best day of the season so far with a weekend of third places, but according to the Capetonian, that’s not quite enough. “For once we had a clean weekend in my Chemical Logistics Sparco WCT Volkswagen Golf GTI,” Julian summed it up. “But we are sitting with a little Balance of Performance deficit that’s hurting us against the BMWs and Toyotas in a straight line. Hopefully the powers that be, can address that in time for East London in August. If so, bring it on!”

Jagger Robertson likewise endured a down on power weekend in his Chemical Logistics Sparco WCT Volkswagen Golf GTI, but the 2024 Investchem Formula 1600 champion was happy to come away from a relatively clean outing versus some crunching races earlier in the year. “Today was an odd one,” Jagger rued. “I had a pretty clean run but we were also struggling on power with both the Golfs, so it proved difficult to keep the Toyotas and BMWs at bay. Hopefully the balance is redressed in time for East London where we can definitely use a few more ponies.”

As far as pace is concerned, Andrew Schofield showed his best yet to qualify a fine fourth at Zwartkops in the second FlySafair Chemical Logistics FAST BMW 328tc. “I was delighted with how qualifying went,” Andrew confessed. “but the races were tough, especially after Keegan and me fell off and I had to start from pit lane in race 2. Still, I’ll take the positives home and there were certainly a few this weekend.” Rookie Siyabonga Mankonkwana endured an even tougher outing in the Investchem FAST Toyota Corolla: “My voyage of discovery took a couple of hard knocks this weekend, so I will certainly put this one down to experience and come back stronger!” Siya frowned.

“You can’t win them all, they say,” team principal Ian Schofield concluded. “But we came back from  Zwartkops with pole position, a race win and second and third overall, so not at all that bad. We also have some work to do on some of the cars, so let’s hope that’s all in place for East London in August. Well done lads!”