Stephan Gouws will be chasing down a hat trick this weekend at Santo’s Summer Thunder held at Sydney Dragway.
Gouws has gotten his national season off to the best possible start by winning both the RCE Performance Jetcar and Sportsman Thunder and New Years Thunder at Willowbank Raceway.
But it came after some hardship. Earlier in the season, Gouws was forced to pull his car from competition when it was discovered to be only running on six cylinders with a broken transmission on top of that.
“We’ve never had to stop racing halfway through an event since we’ve started. It was a tough call to make especially being in the pointy end of the QDRC points but the car was in no shape to be on the racetrack,” Gouws said.
The team finished repairs on the car in November and had to go into the first event of the 400 Thunder sportsman season with no prior testing.
“We used the three qualifiers to tune and get the car set up- just hoping it would come together in time for the first race,” he said.
Stephan and the team went on to win every round and take home the gold Christmas tree that night.
“It was awesome having a racecar underneath me again! Nothing broke, nothing strange happened. It just went straight and fast!”
The New Years Thunder event produced the same awesome result for Gouws. Testing for the event started the Wednesday prior with the team looking to fine tune the dragster. The team ran a personal best of 7.12 in testing, at 186mph.
“I was over the moon running a personal best, and in 35 degree humid conditions. But even more exciting was just how consistent the car ran over the day,” Gouws explained.
The consistency was evident with the team repeating those fast times at the second event, and going through all five rounds.
A trifecta of wins are in Stephan’s sight, as the team has travelled south for this weekend’s Santos Super Thunder at Sydney Dragway.
– SGP Racing Media Release
