Terry Moss made his name as one of South Africa’s most successful saloon car racers. Now he’s making champions.
‘I’d grown up in a trading post in the Eastern Cape with Xhosa as my first language, playing soccer with young black friends,” says the affable saloon-car champion. “I’ve always been keen to get blacks more involved in the sport, and a couple of years ago I was sitting in a restaurant with a guy who told me that he had a young nephew in the Transkei who was quite a daredevil.” Moss asked a few questions and before long had Tschops Sipuka buckled into an old Volkswagen Golf at Port Elizabeth’s Aldo Scribante racetrack for a test session.
“He went out there and quickly showed me that he had serious potential,” says Moss. “There’s one part of the circuit — a fast right hander called Hanger Bend — and I told him that one of the criteria was to be able to get through there flat out. By lap three he was doing it. I’d set him a target time to reach by the end of the day and he shocked me by being just one second off the pace after just two laps.”
Moss was so impressed that he took a bond on his house and bought a car for his protégé. Later that year — in mid-1998 — Sipuka raced in his first club meeting at Killarney in Cape Town. In the rain, he came from behind and took his very first win. By then Moss had grown his stable to two cars and his other driver finished second in the same event.
In 2000 Sipuka moved up to national level, racing in the Polo Cup series. “It’s a serious jump from club to national level,” says Moss, “and Tschops was up and down, coming 15th, taking chances, coming last, but always qualifying well.”
How does he compare with his mentor on the same day in the same car? “We haven’t ever actually compared directly,” Moss says, “but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was quite a bit quicker. Of course, it would be unfair because I’m 28kg heavier.”
Twenty Polo Cup starts, 12 pole positions and 12 wins. “When he finished a race he was always in the top three,” says Moss. But the young star ended the year in second place in the championship — he was bumped off the circuit too often to win the title. The champion, Graeme Nathan, won just three races, but strung together a consistent stream of good placings to top the points tally.
“There was a lot of controversy because we were winning so much and we were really victimised. The other teams lodged protests and the officials stripped our car at just about every race meeting, but only once found anything — a petty thing — wrong with the motor. We forfeited our two wins from that meeting, otherwise we’d have finished the season with 14 wins. Still, even that wouldn’t have given us enough points for the title. There were just too many races where we didn’t score any points at all,” says Moss.
What about the half dozen or so “knocking-off” incidents, when Sipuka was run off the track? Were they deliberate? “Well, they weren’t just a normal part of racing. I think it was often just savage tactics to get rid of Tschops. There would sometimes be talk in the pit lane that he was going to be taken out. But perceptions have changed now that he’s proved he can drive and people have started to accept that he has talent.”
Affirmative action: words guaranteed to raise hackles in the competitive world of sport, and especially so in motor racing where so much money’s involved. But Moss is adamant that there’s nothing undeserved in his young driver’s meteoric rise.
“Believe me, it’s not an affirmative action thing. I’m the first to turn somebody away if they can’t drive a racing car. I’m an absolute purist when it comes to that and I’m not going to put somebody in the car just because he’s black. The second car in my Engen Volkswagen team has a white youngster driving it and he’s there because he’s very good. I won’t waste my time on somebody who’s talentless and I, of all people, can see it within the first hour.”
So can Moss help Sipuka become South Africa’s first black motor sport champion? Maybe. “You can’t make a racing driver, but you can make a champion. There’s a lot of support needed to make a champ.”
In the meantime Moss is running a karting team in the Eastern Cape so he can find other promising drivers for his car racing project. “I haven’t found any serious talent yet,” he says, “but I’m busy with a development programme and need sponsors to take us forward.”
Sipuka has raced in Malaysia and Belgium and done himself proud. He’s taken on the best in South Africa and proved he can stay with them. Now, in just a week’s time he will line up yet again in his quest to become South Africa’s first black motor sport national champion. Then we’ll know if Moss is as good at finding and nurturing talent in a drought-stricken area as he is at divining water. Sipuka obviously believes he is. Recently he was asked what made him stand out from the rest. “I am what I am because of Moss, our sponsors and the Almighty God”, was his answer.