Hurricane dishes out a spectacle

Billows of smoke was complemented by the relentless compulsive sight of legendary BMW E30’s and Altezzas hitting the drifting obstacles at the tyre-barricaded Fairgrounds Spinning palace recently.

‘The Hurricane’ organised by Spin City Motor events in conjunction with Botswana Motorsport attracted spinners from as far as South Africa. However, the competition was only between local spinners while SA spinners drifted for fun and entertainment. Loudly grunting, popping and fishtailing around the ring shielded by tyres piled high to prevent the cars from crashing into spectators. The Toyota Altezzas and BMW 325i popularly known as Gusheshe sear the pavement, endlessly generating the acrid smell of burned rubber and leaving a cloud of smoke in the air.

The adrenaline-rush moment nearly got spoiled by spinners constantly hitting the obstacles. One of the most challenging obstacle was ‘Snake.’ This is whereby a vehicle manoeuvers through tyres without touching them. BMS social responsibility officer, Thabiso Seobamo said figure 8, kitchen and snake obstacles were meant to test the drivers overall control of the vehicle, steering control, hand-eye coordination and most important their ability to control the power of the vehicle, while performing various stunts as is the norm with this exciting sport.

The fabled spinning maestro, Thuto Sheriff Rasegojwa from Bumper Boyz who has been absent from the game for a long time made his way into the spinning palace with his Texas Police embodiment Gusheshe. Overhead lights blazing, siren ringing and Mercedes Benz G63 AMG lookalike side pipes producing nerve-wracking sounds, Sheriff performed some few drifting stunts but could not live up to the crowd’s expectations.

However, the Sheriff came back with a bang and the result unfolded into a thrilling phenomenon. He attributed his few drawbacks to lack of skill in tackling the obstacles. “For most of us it was the first time to meet such kind of obstacles but given enough practice we will familiarise ourselves with them and ultimately dish out splendid performance that none smoke lovers have ever witnessed.

As the somewhat tough tyre frying show progressed, Shatiso Muringa from Team Block8 brought the entire crowd at their feet with the exceptional choreographed stunts despite bursting his tyre in the process.  

The man who stole the show from local spinners was Zikho from Pretoria. The crowd loved the way Zikho made spinning simple in their eyes. Even though his engine failed numerous times, Zikho came back to establish his drifting credentials and prowess. Another local spinner who received massive roar of appreciation from the spectators was Sparks. He pulled one of the best stunts at the event but his inability to obey the rules got him disqualified from the competition. Another local participant, Kagiso Magistrate Binda did not disappoint as he performed the challenging figure 8 obstacle like a pro.

One of the seemingly failure in a brute challenging obstacles was by Omphile Ntlhare who used the much talked about Japanese Toyota Altezza in the German dominated spinning field. Omphile did not give up. He came back with another Altezza branded with ‘Saatane o mala mantsho’ number plate to fix his previous mistakes.

The spinning continued into the chilly evening and smoke billowed from ‘abused’ engines and tyres. The crowd was enraptured, loving every guttural cough of the engine and cheering at every spin.Drifting with no obstacles, another episode of the game brought a considerable excitement to the circuit. A typical smoke screen emitting from the vehicle’s rear tyres formed a gigantic white cloud.

In this round, Thuso Mudongo also known as V-Mud from Botswana Spin Masters, dished out the most outstanding performance to earn the awe of spectators. He executed some bizarre play - jumping out of his motion blue BMW E30, leaving it to do a couple of rotations before entering inside it to finish off the performance. In the end, Shatiso walked away with the title while Thuso Mudongo and The Sheriff came second and third respectively.