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#JaguarSHC: King of the Hill in 15 awesome pics

Knysna - There were thrills, hopes and promises of a new winner claiming the coveted King of the Hill crown... not to mention mechanical failures and a few mishaps during Day 2 and Day 3 of the 2017 Jaguar Simola HillClimb event.

Jaguar South Africa had several cars as entries, along with American racing driver Randy Pobst in one of their cars. Nissan also had several GTRs rumbling up the hill.

There was no extravagant launch of a new car flown in by helicopter this year, as Jaguar had done with the popular F-Pace at the 2016 event, but motoring scribe Ashley Oldfield drove the F-Type Special Edition supercharged 400 Sport as an entry for the King of the Hill.

Taking on the hill

Then of course there were the crowd favourites like Dawie Olivier in the F-Type SVR, Des Gutzeit in his monstrous Nissan GT-R R32 and Andre Bezuidenhout in the 1989 Dallara Formula 1 car just to mention a few. And even American racer Randy Probst, who drove a classic XJS in Classic Car Friday and a F-Type SVR coupe.

The 84 racers for the King of the Hill event were split into three categories; Class A - Rad-going Saloon Cars and Supercars, Class B - Modified Saloon Cars, while Class C represented the Single-Seaters and SportsCars.

Reghard Roets and Wilhelm Baard, respectively.road-going supercars and modified saloons were Taking top honours for the single-seater King of the Hill category was Andre Bezuidenhout in his 1989 Dallara F1 car. Bezuidenhout saw off all challengers in his class when he beat last year’s record by nearly a full second, with a record-setting run of 37.695 seconds.

READ: Fiery end to Knysna Hillclimb: 6 race cars destroyed in fire along N2

The 2017 Jaguar Simola Hillclimb was probably one of the best Hillclimb events in its 8-year history, with superb organisation, thrilling cars and exciting records set. Sadly, it was marred by a tragic incident on Monday (May 8) as six race cars which participated in the event, burned to the stake on a trailer en route home from the event.  

Here's a look at some of the action at the Hillclimb:

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