It’s race time again this weekend. On Saturday, the 2025 Extreme Tour powered by Coca-Cola comes to the Prince George Grand Prix circuit in East London.
The venue is a semi-permanent circuit and incorporates sections of public roads which are closed when racing and practice sessions are under way. It has a rich history, opening in 1934 as a 24.461km track that ran on streets through different areas.
It hosted South African Formula One Grands Prix seven times between 1934 and 1966 and in its current state it’s a more manageable 3.9km stretch of tarmac with nine turns. The legendary racing driver John Love’s 1:24.300 record time still stands, but some of my fellow racers in the GR Yaris Media Challenge admit to being nervous wrecks entering East London.
It’s not the allure of racing competitively where legends such as Jack Brabham have flourished, but facing the most famous section of the track — the peerless Potters Pass curve and the even faster Rifle bend sweep.
We'll approach it flat out, with our little GR torpedoes expected to do be doing in the region of 150km/h as we position to enter Potters.
If you think Turn 1 is vicious, then Turn 3 (Cocobana) is an eye opener that requires full braking from an estimated 230km/h top speed.
Understandably, this is a lot to take in for rookies, but with East London being round five of seven, I can say our amateur statuses are quickly diminishing. My colleagues at Ignition TV have requested that I come race a hot hatch against a superbike on a racetrack for an upcoming episode.
Personally, the confidence levels have increased but still with caution. Besides, this will be my second rodeo at the circuit. My last outing at East London was a little more than a decade ago competing in an unofficial time attack competition in a car of similar size and ethos as my black and yellow GR Yaris automatic.
It remains a treasured memory, especially considering that we were in a fortunate position to be guided around the track by two racing legends: South Africa's Grant McLeery and Britain’s John Cleland. I will use their unforgettable advice.
From a points perspective, I enter East London cool, calm and collected and in second position in the class. SuperSport’s Nabil Abdool leads the class and is now firmly out of reach. The battle to watch now is between myself and Car Magazine’s Kyle Kock who is in third position.
Having begun reeling him in with second place finishes at Gqeberha's Aldo Scribante and Pretoria’s Zwartkops, Kock will relish seeing me in his rear-view mirror, especially as we are separated by just a single point.
The other pending dogfight is between him and AutoTrader’s Lawrence Minnie, who lies fourth in the media standings.
It’s my hope that the racers will again lock horns and let me focus on chasing Abdool.
My middle name is “George”. Luck may just look my way this weekend.
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