Lap of Honour

It’s hard to know quite where to look. Further along is an original 3.0 CSL Batmobile, and DTM cars are ripping huge wheelspins out of pit lane

I’M ON A bus, sitting directly behind the driver, listening to him rant splenetically about a tent city that has materialised overnight on the freeway reservation. It’s my first acquaintance with South Africa and it doesn’t disappoint. As we pull up at a set of lights, the driver stops mid-sentence, looks in his rear-view mirror, yells “OH, FOKOFF!” and leaps out of the vehicle. An overweight gentleman is attempting to waddle off into the oncoming traffic with a suitcase he’s liberated from the bus’s luggage compartment. We’re here to sample BMW’s M Festival at Kyalami. Seems Johannesburg is here to sample us.

Truth be told, I didn’t