This year’s Nissan Charity Cheetah Karting, hosted by Zwartkops International Karting Circuit and the MCP Rental karts raised a whopping R70 000.00, the most ever raised. The annual event, organised by the Clare Vale Racing team saw Nissan South Africa, once again partner as the official sponsor.
The funds raised are for the Ann van Dyk Cheetah Centre, the official charity affiliated to the Clare Vale Racing team. The funds will make a massive difference to the cheetah conservation initiatives, as well as other wildlife conservation initiatives by the centre.
Nissan entered four teams into this year’s event, with the Nissan 1 kart being headed up by Managing Director of Sales and Marketing, Xavier Gobille. Xavier is an avid racer and supporter of wildlife conservation.
Joining Nissan on the track were two teams from Jaguar Land Rover with the JLR 1 team featuring their MD Brian Hastie, as well as teams from Liqui-Moly, Motul OEM Lubricants, BESA Leadership Academy, Suzuki SA, Conti-Tech, Rex Diff & Gearbox, Snake Pit Racing, EV Dynamics and a team from The Truck Man.
Nissan 1 kart took home the top prize for the highly competitive two-hour endurance race, headed up by Xavier Gobille. They were closely followed by the Nissan 2 kart and the Snake Pit Racing team, who completed the podium. There were 15 karts on track, meaning that there was close racing with a lot of passing throughout the event. Despite being highly competitive, the racing was all in good spirits and smiles filled the day’s events.
Special thanks go to Playstation SA, who brought their game consoles along to keep spectators entertained, RunRideDive, who donated their time and skills to produce video footage and images for the event and Magnesium, who did all the graphic design work for the event as a donation. The Magnesium team was also rewarded the special ‘Spirit of Byron’ award as they willingly donated their time and skills to help the Cheetah Centre with content creation for their website, as well as additional marketing material for the centre.
Clare Vale on the event: ”This has to be one of our best events yet. The support from Nissan SA has enabled us to take the event to a whole new level, and their contribution played a big part in the record amount raised. However, we are grateful to each and every team for helping us to support the Cheetah Centre – and the presence of Yeats, the Ambassador cheetah, at prize-giving reminds us just how important it is to help them preserve our wonderful wildlife for future generations.”
Xavier Gobille on the event,” This event is one of the highlights for us at Nissan every year, as cheetah conservation is something that is very close to our hearts. This animal not only aligns to what we stand for as a business within the automotive industry in terms of speed and dedication, but we also wanted to dedicate our time, money and efforts to something that is so much bigger than our business. A special thank you to everyone that participated in this year’s event, as without you the record amount raised wouldn’t have been possible.”
Provided by Nissan SA
