Aldo Scribante secured a podium finish in his Audi S4 competing in the B5 unlimited class for 4 wheel-drive racing cars with five cylinders or more at the inaugural Top of the Hill Challenge at Zwartkops Raceway near Pretoria on Saturday. Despite a dramatic start to the weekend for the Scribante Concrete and Tavcor backed team where they picked up a gearbox issue in the first practice run on Friday, they soldiered on replacing the gearbox on Friday night and were back with a vengeance on Saturday where their times improved with each run on the two kilometre track. Reghard Roets in a Nissan GTR R35 won the class after nursing a couple of software niggles, as well as an overnight gearbox change for the team, with a time of 53.257 seconds just edging out Peter Zeelie in his giant-killing Toyota MR2 by 0.038 seconds. 

For Franco Scribante it will be a weekend that he would want to forget after snapping numerous prop-shafts in his monstrous Nissan GTR R35 due to a software issue that would not release the rear differential fast enough during the launch control sequence at the start of each run. A small consolation for Franco was that he ultimately set the fastest time of the weekend in one of the early qualifiers on Friday with a run of 52.804 seconds.

For the fifty five entries that took part in the first ever Top of the Hill Challenge it was an opportunity to go in the reverse direction around Zwartkops Raceway with the cars heading downhill from the start into a long sweeping lefthander, where many of the cars were travelling at well over two hundred kilometres per hour before a daunting left-handed hairpin followed by a right-handed sweep onto the main straight where they continue climbing up the main straight into a harsh off-camber right handed corner followed by two left hand sweeps to the finish at the top end of the circuit. The end of the main straight saw the drivers having to contend with a ninety degree off camber right-hand bend that caught many drivers off-guard leading to a couple of spins and off track excursions that kept the enthusiastic crowd entertained. 

The feeling amongst competitors and spectators alike, was that the event was a huge success and will certainly grow from strength to strength, with many drivers requesting more of these Time-Attack events to be held around the country to enable the format to be recognised as a national championship

The top three per class shootout results were as follows –