Stephan Gouws will be chasing down a hat trick this weekend at Santo’s Summer Thunder held at Sydney Dragway. Gouws has gotten his National season off to the best possible start by winning both the RCE Performance Jetcar and Sportsman Thunder and New Years Thunder. Earlier in the year, Gouws was forced to pull his car from competition when it was discovered to be only running on six cylinders (not eight) with a broken transmission on top of that. “We’ve never had to stop racing halfway through an event since we’ve started. It was a tough call to make especially being in the pointy end of the QDRC championship but the car was in no shape to be on the racetrack.” Said Stephan.
The team finished the car in November and had to go into the first event of the season with no prior testing. “We used the three qualifiers to tune and get the car set up- just hoping it would come together in time for the first race.” Stephan and the team definitely managed to get the car together, winning every round and taking home the gold Christmas tree that night. “It was awesome having a racecar underneath me again! Nothing broke, nothing strange happened. It just went straight and fast!”
The New Years Thunder event produced the same awesome result for Gouws. Testing for the event started the Wednesday prior with the team looking to fine tune the dragster. The team ran a personal best of 7.12 in testing , at 186miles per hour. “I was over the moon running the quickest I’ve been down the dragstrip and in 35 degree humid conditions! But even more exciting was just how consistent the car ran over the day.” Said Stephan. The consistency was evident with the team repeating those fast times at the second event, going through all five rounds.
The trifecta of wins are in Stephan’s sight as the team has travelled down south for this weekends Santos Super Thunder at Sydney Dragway. All action will be live streamed through OVO play- catch Stephan in his big cubic inch dragster racing in the Modified Eliminator bracket!
