Jon Williams is swapping his Team Sasol S2000 Ford Fiesta and the dusty, rock-strewn stages of the South African Rally Championship for the more civilized environment of the Phakisa race circuit outside Welkom where he will experience the cauldron that is the Bridgestone Production Car Championship.
Jon will share Richard Pinard’s Team Sasol Subaru WRX STI in a unique two-hour endurance race, gaining a taste of the highly competitive and sometimes bruising series that thrills fans around the country.
Team Sasol Subaru’s Hennie Groenewald leads the championship with an 11-point advantage, and Richard and Jon’s role will be to get as high up the order as possible to take points away from his rivals.
The Cape Town-based rally driver is no stranger to the black stuff, having started his racing career in 100cc go-karts at the tender age of 10. By the time Jon had finished his school career he took to the tracks in a Ford Ikon, winning races in classes C and D, twinning his season with his gravel debut in a class A6 Toyota Conquest.
Rallying quickly became Jon’s first choice of motorsport and he won the 2005 Western Cape Regional Rally Championship, successfully defended the following year, where he also competed in class A7 in the national series.
2007 brought Jon into rallying’s top S2000 class, where he ended 5th overall behind the four factory crews. With a World Rally Championship drive in prospect if he could win the African leg of the Pirelli Star Driver Challenge, Jon headed to the FIA African Rally Championship, taking star-driver victories in Uganda, Zimbabwe and Zambia, enough to earn a seat in selected rounds of the WRC.
Two wins, two seconds and a 4th place in the tough World Rally Production Car arena saw Jon clinch the Pirelli Star Driver Championship, for which he received his national colours in 2010.
After a two-year hiatus, Jon made his comeback in 2011 behind the wheel of his Team Sasol Ford Fiesta, where he lies 7th overall after three rounds, just one point adrift of the reigning champion Enzo Kuun.
Jon had a test session in the Team Sasol Subaru on Monday ahead of the Phakisa race meeting and in seven laps was setting competitive times. “I didn’t do anything special, just find out where the buttons are and so on. The Subaru’s power and grip levels are astonishing and the WRX STi is easily the most powerful car I have raced. To get the best out of it, you need to be precise, choose your line and stick to it, then boot the power out of the corner”.
“The seating position is going to be a compromise between myself and Richard but we’ll work through that. I’m really looking forward to the weekend and trying not to think too much about how it will be when ten similar cars are going for the same piece of road”, Jon concluded.
Team Sasol Subaru will be in action in two-back-to-back sprint races at 13h00 and 13h30, with the feature two hour sprint race starting at 16h00.