- All three Suzuki entries completed scrutineering
- Pre-race admin and checks for cars and crews in order
- Suzuki’s action starts tomorrow
All three Suzuki Auto South Africa entries for the 2025 Simola Hillclimb are now officially ready to race. The cars and their respective drivers completed all the pre-event checks in Knysna successfully – a task made somewhat easier by the stock standard cars entered by the Japanese manufacturer.
“Modified and special vehicles typically require significantly more checks,” explained Suzuki Race Team Manager, Chelsy Pinto. “Our cars are unchanged from those that you would encounter on showroom floors across the country, and as such they required little more than a cursory inspection.”
For the 2025 edition of the popular event, which takes place from 2-4 May this year, Suzuki has entered three different models, to be raced up the 1.9km-long hill at Simola, with its nine corners and tight, twisty layout. Perhaps the most striking and surprising of the three entries, a 3-door Jimny will be in the hands of AutoTrader’s Sean Nurse, who is no stranger to the event. Entered in the B9 class, Nurse will be taking on much larger and more powerful SUVs, but he is looking forward to the experience nonetheless.
“I think it’s going to provide a little bit of entertainment for the crowds. It’s something entirely different from what you normally see at the hill. So, I think if anything, it’s a break from all the supercars and crazy things, to see something a little bit more light-hearted go up the hill. And it’s a bit of a personal challenge to drive something like this at Simola. It’s a little bit crazy, but yeah, I’m looking forward to it,” said Nurse.
Taking part in Class A1, Wiele2Wiele’s Jeanette Kok-Kritzinger will be wrangling a 3rd gen Suzuki Swift Sport up the Simola Hill this year. This is a car that has raced at the hill many times in the past, and it is also the most powerful of the three Suzuki entries for 2025. Even so, with 103 kW of power and 230 Nm of torque available from its 1.4-litre turbo-charged four-cylinder Booster Jet engine, it is hardly the most powerful production car taking the starter’s orders. With that said, the car weighs well under a ton, and it has set some highly competitive times in past appearances.
“You have all these cars with big horsepower and then you have a little Swift. But that is exactly the point, you don’t need all the horsepower in the world or all the money in the world to have fun. We are ‘team fun’ and this is with the Suzuki Swift Sport and of course with the yellow you think of the World Rally Championship and the Junior World Rally Series, and that’s exactly where the Swift got involved and made a name – and in this livery as well. So, it’s not just yellow because someone liked the colour. It is yellow because of the racing and the motorsport history of Suzuki,” explained Kok-Kritzinger.
The final Suzuki entry for 2025 will be in the hands of TV presenter for ALL THINGS MOTORING and owner of Performance with Page, Ernest Page. The seasoned racer will be looking to extract as much performance as possible from his standard 4th gen Suzuki Swift. While the GLX specification of his steed includes comprehensive standard equipment, the car shares its 1.2-litre three-cylinder petrol engine with the rest of the range, which was introduced in South Africa near the end of 2024. With only 60kW of power and 112Nm of torque, the Swift may just be the most economically-powered car at the hill this year, yet its ‘HEARTECT’ platform offers exceptional power-to-weight performance, and Page was full of praise for the compact Japanese car:
“I’m looking at the event this weekend from a fun perspective, to prove that you can have fun on a racetrack in any car. And the Suzuki Swift is so popular in South Africa, there are so many people that have this exact car. I think that this is the most prestigious event on the calendar. Certainly, I’ve competed here before, but whether you come to compete or to spectate, you cannot miss this one. You gotta come to the Simola Hillclimb at least once.”
Beyond the three car entries, Suzuki will also be showcasing their latest GSX-8R sportbikes. Two of these spectacular machines will be in action this weekend, doing demo runs up the hill, in the hands of Nicole Purificati and Tristin Pienaar.
Suzuki has been a participant in the event since 2022, though Suzuki-powered machines first braved the hill in 2021. Since then, the Japanese car maker has become a Tier One OEM sponsor of this event, and its support continues this year.
