Glen Marais racing driver clinches overseas VW title
From 2013 to 2015, he took part in 36 races with 16 wins and 32 podium positions
GLEN Marais racing driver Jeffrey Kruger clinched the 2015 Volkswagen Golf Cup Championship.
The 2015 European VW Golf Cup was hosted at six different race tracks across Europe. Three of these were held with the ADAC GT Masters series at Sachsenring, Lausitzring and Oschersleben , while a further one was held with the WTCC at the Slovakiaring.
The remaining two were together with the Central European Porsche Cup at Brno and the final at Poznan in Poland.
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The series was contested by 24 drivers from 10 different countries. Kruger was able to get onto the podium at each round with six wins and six pole positions for the 12 heats. This helped him considerately to build up a reasonably comfortable lead until things went a little wobbly at the penultimate round in Brno where he finished sixth in heat one.
This narrowed the gap to second place by 12 points and going into the final round left him with a 46-point advantage.
With 50 points for a win in each heat, things were a little tense going into the final round. However, Kruger qualified second for both heats and ended third and second respectively, which was enough to clinch the title ahead of Dylan Pereira from Luxembourg and Marcus Fluch from Sweden.
Kruger started his motorsport career at the tender age of five in karting. He participated on and off until the age of 15, when he received his northern region colours for winning the Junior Max regional championship.
He then progressed to the saloon car championship at the age of 16 in a local club series, Superhatch. He won the class N championship, followed by the class A championship at 17 years old.
He then made the transition to national saloon car racing in the highly competitive South African Volkswagen Polo Cup, where he raced for three years, finishing sixth, seventh and fifth respectively.
At the end of 2012, he participated as a guest driver in the final round of the Volkswagen Polo R Cup series in India where he finished on the podium in both races. In 2013, alongside his national racing in South Africa, he took part in the Volkswagen Polo R Cup Indian series.
He won the series and was awarded with a free drive in the 2014 Volkswagen Castrol Cup in Poland, where he finished second in the championship. This year he competed in the same series and became the champion.
Kruger is a final year mechatronics student at Tshwane University of Technology. He would like to further his racing career in Europe and dreams of racing in the Porsche Super Cup (Support races for formula 1) in the near future.
From 2013 to 2015, he took part in 36 races with 16 wins and 32 podium positions.
