What CompCare Polo Cup 2023 Round 5 Report
Where East London Grand Prix Circuit
When Saturday 22 July 2023
Community South Africa National
Harsh East London true to form for Lupini
East London refused to prove third time lucky for Giordano Lupini and his Tork Craft Volkswagen in the weekend’s CompCare Polo Cup races at the Grand Prix Circuit’s Extreme Festival. Lupini was just happy to score decent points and come home with a more or less straight car after a tough weekend at the epic Border racetrack.
“Let’s just say that in spite of its heady legend, the East London Grand Prix Circuit and I are finding it difficult to be friends,” Giordano frowned. “We struggled to find any real pace on Friday, so I was happy to deliver a more or less decent lap in qualifying. Still, in typical fashion here, that was just a thousandth of a second shy of Superpole, so I started seventh.
“Race 1 started well enough and I was chasing for fourth when I was helped off and dropped back to eleventh or something. I fought back to ninth and there may be a change depending on the official view of that incident, which is not really what we were looking for this weekend.
“The second race went a bit better; I started seventh again and was shuffled a place or two back in the confusion on the first lap, but I put my head down and fought with all my heart to get up to sixth. Then just defended like hell from there. It’s been a bit of a barren patch in the Eastern Cape after our great if late start to the season.
“We head back to my home track next for a three race weekend at Killarney in Cape Town. I have a pretty decent record over the last two or three rounds there, which is a bit of a double edged sword, because there’s also the expectation. But we will give it our best to thrill my home fans, so diarise this now and come support us: Killarney 10 September!
*Scuderia Lupini salutes our sponsors and partners, Tork Craft Tools, Red Earth Projects, Pabar Automotive Components, Bullion IT, AcciDent Guru, Habot Synthetic Lubricants, Franschhoek Signs, Seldenrod and all our other backers and fans, for your generous support and contributions to our racing effort.
Issued on behalf of Giordano Lupini
Photography by: Andre Laubscher
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