Driving the PG Glass supported Formula Volkswagen, Midrand’s petite 18-year old Tasmin Pepper made history at Kyalami on Saturday when she became the first woman to win a round of the South African Formula Volkswagen championship.

Making it even more of a sweet victory is the fact that this year the series carries South African National Drivers Champion status, a title which was last awarded ten years ago.

After taking third place in East London earlier this month, it was a fired up and confident Tasmin who arrived at Kyalami for round five of the championship. Throughout practice on Friday she was quick as she and race engineer Brett Mayberry worked on fine tuning the set-up. She was typically modest about her prospects. “The car feels good and I never felt like I was ever driving at the limit.”

Qualifying was on a cold track early on race morning but, unlike others the team didn’t make any radical changes to the set-up and she was slightly disappointed to have only been sixth fastest.

It is always risky being in the middle of a hungry pack at the start of a race but she showed great maturity in avoiding the chaos on the opening lap and crossed the line at the end of the lap in third place. A lap later she was up to second and thanks to consistently fast laps she gradually built up a 10-second gap over Simon Moss.