MOTORING NEWS - South Africa won the Nations Cup in the 2014 Rotax Max Challenge grand finals in Spain, beating 58 competing countries thanks to a blistering performance of the 10-driver SA team throughout the six-day event.
South Africa won this prestigious trophy ahead of Australia and host nation Spain.
In a nail-biting finale on a rain-soaked track outside Valencia on Saturday, Durban's four-time world champion karter, Cristiano Morgado, finished second in the DD2 Masters Category to cap a highly successful week for the South African squad.
Going into the final day of this most competitive championship in international karting, South Africa had six drivers that made it through to the finals in the four World Championship categories. This was a fantastic achievement, as the championship was made up of over 270 drivers from close to 60 competing countries, and all these drivers were either national or regional-open champions.
The South Africans had continually been among the fastest drivers in the qualifying and elimination runs.
Capetonians Eugene Denyssen and Luke Herring shared the fifth row of their final event, but, again, chaotic starts by many of the desperate drivers saw Herring knocked to the back of the field and Denyssen losing several places. Denyssen fought back brilliantly to run as high as sixth by mid-distance, but again another incident saw Denyssen drop to the back of the field. Herring was eventually placed 17th and Denyssen 25th.
In the DD2 Gearbox Class, South Africa was represented by Bradley Liebenberg in the finals, a 15-year-old from Gauteng and Benjamin Habig from KwaZulu-Natal. Liebenberg starting an excellent fourth on the 34-kart grid, but set-up problems saw him battle to achieve the right grip on an extremely wet track, and he faded to 14th.
Morgado was thus passed by two drivers during his race, but although he finished third on the track, he was promoted to second overall, after Martin Pierce of Ireland was found to have a technical infringement on his kart in post-race scrutiny.
