The Board of Directors of Motorsport South Africa announced earlier today that it had accepted the resignation of Mr Francois Pretorius as Chief Executive Officer and Director of the company, with immediate effect.

The Board has commenced the process to appoint a new CEO.

The Board also announced the appointment of Steve Miller as its new chairperson to replace Dr George Nyabadza, who resigned earlier this year.

Mrs Beaulah Schoeman, Honorary President of the Board, says MSA is fortunate to have someone of Mr Miller’s calibre and experience to lead the board.  “Steve is a visionary with a proven track record of execution.   He is a strong communicator and marketer who is customer focused with strong leadership capabilities.”

In addition four members of the board have been elected to a newly formed Executive Committee (EC) tasked with supporting Miller and the management team (Mancom), with the day-to-day operations.   These members, including Mr Miller, are:  Messers Pieter du Toit, Neil McCann, Lindsay Steyn and Carel Pienaar.

Rumours doing the rounds suggest that motorcycles might not race at Zwartkops for the opening round of the Wesbank Super Series.

The track was recently resurfaced (had some sort of seal applied) and was evidently very slippery, to the extent that lap times dropped by nearly two seconds. This coupled to the fact that run off areas are barely adequate led to an in depth safety inspection earlier this week. More work was carried out to remove excessive sealant and the track was evidently given the okay by Greg Gildenhuis, Clint Sellar and Richard Carmody.

At the recent international classic racing event in January northern regions competitor Wim Pretorius lost his life after crashing at the top of the hill. At a race last year a motorcycle vaulted the barriers at turn 1 and came to rest in the track on the approach to the ultra fast turn 3. Deon Verster was another regional competitor who lost his life at the track. Trajan Grobler is confined to a wheelchair and Louis van Bergen suffered devastating injuries after hitting barriers. Van Bergen ended up in an unprotected drain!

Work was also carried out to the gravel traps and the official word is that there will be both 600 Supersport and 1000cc Superbikes at Zwartkops, but that could change.

It seems that Kyalami's future is secure, at least for the time being.

We hear a final liquidation order was granted against the farm Bothasfontein (the land on which Kyalami race track is built) last week and the Theodosiou brothers – Anthony, Dimitri and Sedrick, will leave shortly.  

The next step is that the property goes on auction and the Imperial Group buys back what it rightfully owns. Sounds complicated, but at least the wheels are in motion.

Two Mini Coopers are expected to enter class T of the Bridgestone Production Car championship this year as part of the ADF Team which currently has the succesfull Afrox BMWs in Class A.

Drivers are said to be Engen VW Cup masters champion Lee Thompson and 2010 FIA LMP3 champion Gavin Cronje who was also a Rookie driver for the SA A1GP team.

More Prod Car news is that Alberton based Big Boss Auto will be joining the Class T ranks with a brace of Renaults for Engen VW Cup champ Devin Robertson with the second driver yet to be announced.

With a mere 24 days to go before the begining of the 2012 Wesbank Super Series, billed as South Africa's premier national championship roadshow, there is still no clarity on whether it will be at Kyalami as scheduled, or at Zwartkops.

We heard the owners of Kyalami originally wanted R600k to stage the event but that was reduced by half but also rejected by Wesbank. The latest offer appears to be lower still but is for a bare circuit. In other words the WSS promoters (ask who that might be, coz we certainly don't know!!) will walk into a bare circuit and have to arrange everything from security to toilet paper.

As we said two days ago ... watch this space.