Head-to-head finale for 2022 Radical Caribbean Cup

The 2022 Radical Caribbean Cup (RCC) is heading to a thrilling conclusion this weekend (November 12/13) when the Guyana Motor Racing & Sports Club (GMR&SC) stages the International Race of Champions, its first-ever race meeting on the country’s newly-extended South Dakota Circuit. Home favourite and early season points leader Kristian Jeffrey goes head-to-head for the title with Trinidad & Tobago’s Kristian Boodoosingh, who leads the standings by 15 points.

Maximum points-scorers between them in seven of the nine races this season, the two Kristians have put the title out of reach of anyone else, so whoever wins the title will add a third nation to the RCC Roll of Honour following Stuart Maloney of Barbados in 2018 and Jamaica’s William Myers in 2019. Maloney is third in the standings this year, but even three wins and the bonus points for fastest lap would only bring him level with Jeffrey, assuming the Guyanese driver failed to score on home ground.

This has been 2014 and 2015 Caribbean Motor Racing champion Jeffrey’s first full season in the region since 2017, when he was crowned Suzuki Challenge Series SR3 Cup Winter Champion. After finishing fourth in the UK Radical Challenge Championship in 2018, he returned home to share the RCC wins at South Dakota that November with fellow-countryman Calvin Ming.

With four wins in Barbados in July and August, Jeffrey led the standings until round three at the Frankie Boodram Wallerfield International Raceway last month, when ‘Boodoostig’ made the most of home advantage to claim maximum points in all three races, despite finishing second in two of them to FIA F3 vice-champion Zane Maloney, who was a guest driver, therefore not eligible for points.

The standout performance among the Barbadian drivers this year has come from Justin Maloney, who is only two points behind his uncle Stuart and fourth in the standings. By far the least experienced of the Maloney clan, he is the only member of the family to have competed in every race this year and has finished them all, with steadily improving results. After the second race at Wallerfield, he was briefly third and highest-placed of the Barbados drivers.

Fifth in the standings is Jamaica’s Senna Summerbell, son of multiple Caribbean Motor Racing Champion David Summerbell Jnr, in what has proved to be a challenging first season in the RCC. Behind him, there’s a gap of more than 20 points to sixth-placed Sean Maloney, who won the inaugural SCS SR3 Cup, with his brother Mark and Suleman Esuf of Barbados next up, all bracketed by just three points.

Esuf has won multiple titles in a Radical SR3 since he first switched from drag racing to the circuits in 2016, most recently the 2018 Radical Carnival at Bushy Park Barbados; he also shares an enthusiasm for rallying with his brother Ahmed, who completes the Bajan drivers on this weekend’s RCC grid. Although a less experienced circuit racer than ‘Sol’, he has raced at South Dakota before, in 2019, when he claimed one race win and two other top four finishes in his Group 2 Honda Civic. He will also campaign the same car again this weekend, while Mark Maloney’s Mazda RX-3 has been shipped from T&T to compete in Group 4 along with Barbadian Steve King’s Nissan Skyline.

There remains a mathematical chance of Barbados claiming the RCC Nations Cup in its first year, but it would require victory in all three races which, based on the results so far this year, would be a tall order. In addition, of the Bajans competing this weekend, only Stuart Maloney has won at South Dakota in a Radical in the past, although the opening of the new circuit extension is expected to create a more level playing field, as no-one will have raced there in the past.

While there were originally three circuit configurations at South Dakota in the late 1950s – small, medium and large – racing has been limited to the short circuit of just 0.78 miles in recent years. After some years of discussions and planning, with the coronavirus pandemic latterly causing delays, work on extending the circuit started this year, using some components of the previous medium layout, along with a new inner section with a hairpin. It has doubled in length to 1.6 miles, including one of the longest straights in the region, at half a mile, with lap times likely to more than double from 34 seconds for a typical Group 4 car to around 1min 13secs. (RB)