1701 RF final

little bikes
BIG ACTION!
The traditional year-end endurance race for lightweight motorcycles at Killarney returned to
its familiar format for 2016, starting at 10am and running for eight hours on Saturday at the
demanding one-kilometre ‘K’ circuit under the Mad Mac’s banner.
Words: Dave Abrahams Pics: Dave Abrahams & Steve Williams
The 34th running of this classic
international event was again dominated by
the UK-based RST team of Jonny Towers,
CEO of bikewear giant RST, international
Superstock 1000 rider David ‘McFlash’
McFadden and local teenage hotshot
Kewyn Snyman, on their immaculately
prepared Honda CBR150.
It was this team’s fourth win in five years,
and the 10th time that Towers had been a
member of the winning squad.
But it was McFlash who threw down
the gauntlet in qualifying, posting a 48.878
second lap that got him provisional pole
ahead of the Superpole shootout, when the
top 10 qualifiers were given six flat-out laps,
going out at five-second intervals to ensure
that each had a clear track.
The result was a blistering 48.325,
almost half a second clear of former multiple
South African Superbike champion Greg
Gildenhuys on the second of the two Van
Bros CBR150 machines, and 0.7s faster
than Van Bros team leader Aran van Niekerk.
Initial mayhem
Van Niekerk, however, got the best of
the traditional Le Mans start, sprinting
across the track to the line-up machines
and getting away marginally ahead of
McFadden, to lead the first three, insanely
congested, laps.
Nevertheless, by the time the mayhem
had partially sorted itself out and the debris
from the inevitable early crashes caused by
hotshot riders trying to win an eight-hour
race in the first five minutes, McFadden had
taken over the lead and was pulling slowly
away from Daryn Upton on the Gautengbased
OCC CBR150 he was sharing with
fellow SuperGP racers Brent Harran and
Luca Gaspar, with Van Niekerk a close third
on the Van Bros family CBR150 he was
sharing with his father, Mark van der Walt,
brother Nicholas and Michael Hall.
By the end of the first hour, McFadden
and Towers had lapped the entire field at
least once, peeling off 69 laps to the 68 of
the OCC, Van Bros and Fast Lane riders –
Erin Lane, Brandon Story, Damien Mompie
and Zafir Dinly on the CBR150 with which
Lane usually competes in short-circuit
sprint events.
56 RIDEFAST MAGAZINE JANUARY 2017