Heartbreak and heroics: Secunda racer’s title fight at Red Star Raceway
Robert Jonck finished second overall in the Red Star Raceway RSR 400 Championship held on November 23, despite going down on lap four of race two.
The Red Star Raceway in Delmas hosted the final round of the RSR 400 Championship on November 23. Coming into the weekend, Secunda’s Robert Jonck led the championship by just one point over his rivals, with Jarod Geypen and Mueez Jassat tied right behind him.
One mistake, one bad race, and the title was gone.
The odds were stacked before he even turned a wheel. Jonck hadn’t had the preparation he wanted, and to make things worse, the organisers changed the track direction in the lead-up to the event.
Saturday practice (November 22) was a grind. Jonck fought an irritating vibration from the wheels that refused to disappear. Still, he did what racers do: He adapted, put his head down, and turned laps to get his eye in on the reversed layout.
A bold call followed in the pits: New front and rear tyres to try and tame the vibration. It worked. The bike felt better, and in the last session on Saturday, he went back out, not for glory, just to scrub in the tyres and make sure the bike was ready for an all-or-nothing Sunday.
Overnight, the weather turned ugly. With conditions looking doubtful, race control scrapped the traditional Sunday warm-up. No easing into the day, no final checks, just straight into qualifying.
Under pressure, with no margin for error, Jonck delivered P2 on the grid, still shy of his personal best pace but good enough to be in the fight. His main title rival, Jassat, hammered home the advantage and took pole.
After qualifying, Jonck was clear: The track felt greasy, and he was losing the front when fully leaned over. The team made some adjustments, and that was that. No more excuses. Time for race one. When the lights went out, it did not start like a champion’s script.
Jonck bogged off the line and was swallowed into turn one in fourth place. By the end of the opening lap, he had dragged himself back up to second, but was already 1.7 seconds adrift of Jassat. On lap two, Jassat did what he does best: He checked out, opening the gap, while Jonck got dragged into a fierce scrap with Tristan Henning for second place.
The fight cost him. Jonck lost nearly 2.9 seconds to Henning and looked, for a moment, like he would fade. Instead, he reset, found his rhythm, and started punching out quick laps. Bit by bit, the gap shrank. By lap seven, he was right back on Henning’s rear wheel, close enough to launch a move and set up a final-lap showdown.
On that same lap, he dug deep and delivered his personal best lap of 2:11.651, proof that the pace and the intent were there when it mattered. He managed to get past Henning and moved into second, but the fight was far from over.
On the run to the line, Henning struck back and, in a drag race that had the fans on their feet, pipped Jonck by just 0.040 seconds. Jonck crossed the line third. A savage reminder of how thin the margins are when a championship is on the line.
Race two was the last roll of the dice. Again, the start hurt him. Jonck dropped to fifth by the end of lap one. On lap two, though, he settled into a rhythm and started reeling in the riders ahead.
He closed the gap to third and fourth, then made a committed move up the inside to grab third place. The chase was on.
By then, the gap to second place was 6.1 seconds with only six laps remaining. It was a massive ask, but not impossible if he could string together another sequence of qualifying-style laps. Instead, his season unravelled in the ugliest way possible: Not through a mistake of his own, but through someone else’s.
While lapping a back marker on lap four, the slower rider suddenly swerved across his line. With nowhere to go, Jonck went down. Just like that, his race was over, and with it, his shot at sealing the championship from the front.
Despite the DNF in race two, Jonck still did enough over the season to finish second overall in the RSR 400 Championship.
Not the fairytale ending he wanted, but a hard, honest result in a brutally tight title fight.
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