The Sporting Car Club of SA (SCCSA) held its final meeting of the 2021 season on the weekend, hosting the postponed third round at Mallala Motorsport Park.
 
Around 120 drivers took part in the season finale at the historic circuit with seven categories featuring in a busy two-day schedule. 
 
Once again, the Hyundai Excels boasted the largest grid of the race meeting with an impressive 36-car field competing over five races. 
 
Just like the most recent round at the Mallala Motorsport Park 60th anniversary in August, Jayden Wanzek and Asher Johnson were again toe-to-toe, the former gaining revenge on the five-time Ryan Pannowitch Memorial trophy winner with a win of his own.
 
Johnson drew first blood with pole though, but Wanzek bounced back with a first race win after the polesitter fell to fifth, before adding another win and two podiums to his haul.


As for Johnson, he also picked up two wins and two podiums, however his podiums weren’t as high compared to Wanzek’s - giving the young gun ultimate bragging rights for the round.
 
While the Excels were the largest field of the weekend, the category to enjoy the biggest race was the 19-car Improved Production field, which ran the Michael Rooke Memorial on its second outing.
 
A bizarre start to the weekend for the category saw the first race abandoned due to an oil spill causing more than half the field to slide off the track and into the sand trap.
 
Eventually the category got back on track for the memorial race which was won by Christopher Brown over Scott Cook and Adam Allan.


The remaining three races ended with the same podium, as Brown completed a clean sweep of wins in his Toyota Sprinter, while Cook and Allan both exchanged positions.
 
Clean sweeps were a rarity during the weekend with Formula Vee winner Sam Woodland the only other driver to win every race for his respective category.
 
Woodland was dominant from the start and cruised to victory on every occasion as a variety of drivers battled hard behind him to take out the minor positions – the only constant being Benjamin Forgan who finished all five races on the podium.
 

There was plenty of drama in other categories as the Racing Cars missed out on their first race due the oil spill, but once they did get running, Mark Haig won twice and his rival Andrew Ford managed one win.
 
In the final race of the weekend, winner Matthew Woodland was just one of three drivers to finish.
 
The drama didn’t stop there as a chaotic penultimate race in the combined Saloon Cars/HQ Holdens field saw four drivers fail to finish, including Shawn Jamieson and Wayne King – both of whom finished all three other races for the round on the podium. Taking out the chaotic race was Samuel Milton, while Darren Jenkins finished third and was the fastest HQ Holden on all four occasions.
 
Despite the DNF, Jamieson enjoyed the better record of the two frontrunners with two wins and one second place trumping King’s two runner-up finishes and one win.
 

The final racing category of the weekend was another combined field, the Sports Cars/Sedans, which saw Myles Bond and Mark Rosser share two wins apiece. Matthew Wildy in his Mazda RX7 got the other race win to add to his three podiums.
 
On Sunday, fans were treated to a Porsche show as 19 cars featured in the Porsche Sprint which featured three official sessions.
 
Going fastest in all three was Gregory Keene with the Porsche GT2 RS driver’s best time coming in the second session with an impressive lap time of 1:12.653.
 

The next fastest was Porsche Cayman driver Shane Wirthensohn, who posted a 1:14.8513 in the final session of the day, while Peter Panopoulos’ 1:16.3191 in the second session was enough for the Porsche Boxster pilot to claim third place. 
 
Click here for more information on the weekend.