Round 5 of the CompCare Polo Cup took place at the historic East London Grand Prix Circuit over the weekend. Farhaan Basha, piloting the QVWI Motorsport Volkswagen Polo, excelled at one of the tougher circuits on the 2023 calendar, bouncing back from an opening race penalty to claim a podium in Race 2.
Following some strong pace throughout Friday’s three practice sessions, Basha made it into the all-important SuperPole Shootout, which sees the top six competitors compete for the outright pole position for Race 1.
Starting from fifth for the opening race, the Johannesburg driver made a strong start and quickly slotted into the usual train of cars on the opening lap. Several positional changes were made with the Push-to-Pass mechanism and a bigger-than-usual slipstream advantage that saw Basha dropping two positions. As the usual Polo Cup scrap unfolded, Basha would valiantly fight back to finish fourth. A post-race penalty would see Basha relegated to eighth.
Basha would, however, put in his best performance of the season thus far, finishing in an impressive third after starting fourth, after some close racing with the championship leaders.
“Very happy with our performance this weekend. We had a strong pace throughout and were able to show what we could do in race conditions if we got the chance. Fortunately, there weren’t niggling issues, and we had a great weekend, despite the Race 1 penalty, which I thought was a tad harsh. Thank you to the team and QVWI Motorsport for the support, and let’s build on this momentum.”
Round 6 of the championship returns to Killarney International Raceway for its return leg on 8-9 September.
Published by: Motorsport Fanatix
Picture Caption: Farhaan Basha
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.