Summarize

The race weekend past delivered more than its fair share of excitement, incidents and accidents.

In what proved to be the ultimate of grandstand finishes, unfancied East London duo Philip Wiese and Dean Ball's BMW 328 found itself in a clear one-lap lead with half an hour of the Midas PE 3 Hour endurance race left to run Saturday evening, but they came under attack from the superbly driven Dave Sinclair/Eric Salomon Elf S06, which first unlapped itself and then went on to take six to eight seconds a lap out of the BMW as both crews pushed as hard as they could. 

With 30 seconds to go, the BMW led the Elf by all of seven seconds as the two raced through the dark into the final lap, but it was just not enough as Wiese’s BMW crossed the line with less than three seconds in hand to take an unexpected and giant-killing victory. Hennie Trollip and Jimmy Dunn’s Lotus class winning Seven was third, a lap behind the Sinclair/Salamon Elf, but the fight for fourth was just as tense as Sarel van der Merwe and Riaan Botma’s Ligier J53 EVO similarly came from behind to pass Modified Class runners-up, Gareth Hudd and Brent Watts' Nissan 350Z on that dramatic final tour.

It was not only that BMW that pulled off a dramatic giant-killing act on Saturday — the Mahle PE 200 — the oldest motorcycle race in South Africa saw Jared Schultz put his nimble 600cc Yamaha R6 to best use over the 36-lap race to steal the 200 British pound purse over BMW class winners, John Kriege and Roberto Jonke and Mark and Alex van den Berg the first Unlimited machine home aboard their Suzuki 1000R in third. The Klinicare PE 100 motorcycle race for smaller-bore bikes saw Kawasaki Twin duo Chris Wiliiams and Andrew Liebenberg fought it out for 20 laps and only a second separated them at the flag, with Historics rider Jaco Scholtz (Yamaha) next up.

The big action overseas was the season-ending Valencia Moto GP, where Andrea Doviziozo scored Ducati’s 50th win in a race re-started in stormy weather. He beat Spanish survivors Alex Rins’ Suzuki and Pol Esperargo, who scored his and KTM’s first podium finish. KTM meanwhile won the Moto GP maker’s title courtesy of Miguel de Oliveira winning the race after SA teammate binned it, but the biggest news was an unknown Turkish 15-year old winning his debut Moto 3 race — remember his name — Can Oncu…

Sebastien Ogier meanwhile wrapped up his sixth World Rally Championship, his second in a row for Ford with a measured drive to fifth in the Aussie WRC finale after his title rivals fell by the wayside one by one as Jari-Matti Latvala took the win to secure Toyota the manufacturer’s world title. In other news, Dan Tictum survived to win a Macau Formula 3 GP highlighted by a horrific areal accident that left German lass Sophia Florsch, rival Sho Tsuboi, twho photographers and a marshal in hospital.