LIFE MEMBERSHIPS FOR JAYBEE PRETORIUS AND LOUIS DE JAGER

LIFE MEMBERSHIPS FOR JAYBEE PRETORIUS AND LOUIS DE JAGER

At the Annual General meeting of the Western Province Motor Club on Thursday 10 September 2020, honorary life memberships were bestowed on Johan ‘JayBee’ Pretorius and Louis de Jager in recognition of their many years of service to the Club and its members.

JayBee Pretorius (left) and Louis de Jager (right) are seen here with WPMC Chairman Gavin Cerff.

The Club’s AGM was held digitally in compliance with Covid-19 health and safety protocols, so the presentations were made in the Adrian Pheiffer Lounge at the Power Series event presented by Wingfield Motors and Kfm 94.5 on Saturday 12 September.

Read their citations below:

JOHAN ‘JAYBEE’ PRETORIUS

JayBee Pretorius became involved in the administration of Classic and Fine Car racing in 1989, before he even started racing himself, assisting with the scoring of championship and class points, and allocation of racing numbers.

He took part in two track days with his Renault R10 Alconi, but blew the motor in the second, whereupon he sold the R10, bought a BMW 2002 and went racing for real.

He raced that same car (with considerable success!) for 27 years, which is thought to be a Killarney record for the same car/driver combination.

More importantly, however, throughout that time he continued to serve on the section committee as the Scorer for Classics and Fine Cars, administering their rather complicated points-scoring systems, calculating the results and ensuring that competitors were scored in the correct classes, as well as allocating racing numbers.

Awarded an Honours Badge in 2013, he continued with his service to the WPMC even after ill-health forced him to stop racing, and this month (September 2020) marks his 31st year of continuous service as a section committee member.

Among his less well-known contributions to the growth and success of classic and fine car racing at Killarney is the fact that the ‘Johan Pretorius’ who contributed articles and photographs on the series to the Classic Car Africa magazine for 11 years, from its inception in 1994 until 2005, was in fact our own JayBee !

And to this day he continues to post Classic and Fine Car results and photographs on the historic Facebook page ‘Killarney – 50 Years On”.

The Western Province Motor Club thanks Jaybee Pretorius for his dedicated service and bestows Honorary Life Membership on him.

JURGEN LOUIS DE JAGER

Louis de Jager began racing at Killarney in 1981, in a borrowed Cortina MkII, in the Clubmans category.

In 1982 he bought an Alfa Giulia 1600 for R200 and raced it (later with a two-litre Alfa engine) in Clubmans for eight years, winning the Clubmans championship four times along the way. During this time he served on the Clubmans section committee, including a period as chairman.

In 1989, with the help of Lotus 23 owner Eric Salomon and Fred van Heerden, he built a Lotus 23 replica, which he called the ELF 89. Before it was finished, however, Clubmans became a saloon-car series, so Louis was instrumental in forming a new section called Historics, to cater for older cars, particularly sports cars.

This later became the Classics section, of which Louis was chairman for some years. He helped grow the section until in 1996, at the suggestion of then chairman Rick Davis, it was split into two categories, for open and closed cars.

Sports Cars (later extended to include GT cars) thus became a category in its own right.

Louis served on its committee from its inception and was chairman for many years.

In 1996 it became a Regional championship, with Louis as its first series champion – which earned him WP Colours for motorsport.

Louis continued to race in the Sports and GT category throughout this time. In 1999 with the help of Godfrey Lancellas, who had the chassis plans and body moulds, and Eric Booth, he built a Lola T212 Replica, with which he won the Sports and GT championship in 2002 and again in 2008.

During this period, he also served as section representative on Sportcom, and has been a member of Mancom since 2014.

The Lola was damaged in a crash in May 2018, which put Louis out of racing for four months – his first break from racing since 1981. He returned to competition later that year and continued to race full-time until lockdown in March 2020 – and when lockdown was lifted in August 2020 Louis was on the grid with the Lola, in his 39th year of competition.

In that time, he has served 31 years on various committees, helping to steer the Club through far-reaching changes.

Already the recipient of an Honours Badge in 2015, the WPMC now bestows Honorary Life Membership on Jurgen Louis de Jager for his ongoing and dedicated service.