Warren Lombard persevered through a testing opening round of the 2023 Mobil 1 V8 Supercars Championship at the Kyalami Grand Prix Circuit on 23-25 February to finish fourth overall.
After two solid practice sessions on Thursday where Lombard placed in the top four, the Johannesburg driver was keen on a positive start to his 2023 campaign and determined to put his Bumper-to-Bumper/Pep Boys Ford Falcon on the pole position. Sixth was the best he could muster, though in the three laps he was on the circuit on Friday morning.
Friday afternoon saw the opening race, where Lombard finished fourth. Able to run the leaders’ pace over the opening laps, Lombard would suffer from fading brakes to ease the car over the line and bag some valuable championship points. In Saturday morning’s second race, Lombard again managed an issue on the car that saw him finish in sixth. Running as high as third over the first few laps, Lombard was slowly caught and passed by three competitors.
“Not quite the start to the season we were expecting,” said Lombard. “On Thursday, we had good pace, and then we started running into issues. Fortunately, none of these issues forced me to retire, and I could still score good points. It’s always exciting to race here at Kyalami. The circuit is iconic and has a proud history of hosting international events. We will strip the car down before the next one, and hopefully we can fight at the front sooner rather than later.”
Lombard thanks PEP BOYS, Bumper-To-Bumper, Hi-Tech Mag Repairs, GW Racing and Di Matteo Racing for the support. Round 2 of the championship is scheduled for 21-22 April at Red Star Raceway, Delmas.
Published by: Motorsport Fanatix – Raymond Cornwell
MSA Publishes media releases from a host of different sources on our website as a service to the sport. It is not practically possible to vet/approve every release that is published. Some news items and articles are written by correspondents and do not necessarily represent MSA’s views.