I did not even think a visit to another circuit besides the iconic Kyalami would be on the cards for my first trip to South Africa, but I would be wrong. My friend and host for the trip Victor went above and beyond to spoil me as a tourist and took me to his home circuit in nearby Pretoria called Zwartkops.
With two nearby world class racing facilities Victor is spoiled for choice with local Motorsport. As it turns out with the recent purchase of Kyalami by the country’s Porsche distributor a lot of the businesses previously based there had migrated to Zwartkops which is great news for that facility. As a visitor it immediately reminded me of some tracks in Germany I had visited recently… like say Hockenheimring, or even the Nordschleife at Nurburgring. Why? Because the local South African Motorsport community doesn’t mess around. There are fancy modern purpose build facilities by each organization that utilizes the track. There’s a large building at one corner dedicated to the Mercedes-AMG complete with a familiar design like that at the Nurburgring where the three pointed star logo rotates on it’s axis above the building featuring a lot of AMG advertising. There’s obviously an AMG driving academy on site. A similar building is dedicated to BMW ///M – Motorsport division at another corner and there’s an BMW M school there too. There are other performance driving schools at other sections of the track in addition to performance shops located in the main paddock featuring beautiful race cars like the Porsche below.
There’s always something happening at the track which means Race Control and Medical is always manned. And some of those workers are Mazda Miata fans too. Who would have thought? The day we visited there was a driving school on track.
Thank you so much Victor for the opportunity to visit this amazing circuit. Maybe one day I will get a chance to volunteer there as well.