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Groenewald rates Killarney as one of his favourite tracks and is looking forward to good things with his Sasol-supported Subaru Impreza STI.
"The fans are very knowledgeable and follow a specific driver or team," says Groenewald. "The vibe is brilliant. A characteristic of the circuit is the big braking zones which creates close racing."
"I expect the Impreza to be extremely competitive so I can fight for a win," Groenewald added. "The team has done a raft of improvements in the three short weeks between Kyalami and Cape Town, including installing performance brakes. The Impreza is the most 'standard' car in the field, and it's amazing they achieved the results last year that they did under the circumstances."
The championship-winning SP Racing Team has been working 16-hour days readying the car for its next challenge.
"The immediate priority in upgrading the car is to install the first phase of a new Motec computer system and knock sensors for each cylinder, which will allow us to monitor the engine's performance more accurately," said team Principal Carel Pienaar.
"After Kyalami we sent the engine to be dyno tested and found we were 45kW down on what we should have. That's a huge disadvantage in such a close-fought series. That alone indicates we still have huge forward potential. I anticipate us to drastically slash the gap to the leaders. Under the best circumstances in Cape Town, I would not be expecting a brilliant result because the normally-aspirated cars gain 18% in power at the coast, and we only gain 5%, but if the margin is narrower, I will be satisfied."
The Subaru gains 18% power at altitude because of the advantage of its turbo-charger.
A second Subaru Impreza STI is well under way at the team's Vanderbijl Park workshop for Dawie Olivier's return in May.
"We've started building the suspension and new engines," said Pienaar. "Everything we create is duplicated so that we can strip down and re-build Hennie's car during the Soccer World Cup mid-season break. We have the new sub-assembly and in Cape Town we will have a spare engine - if it is ever needed - with all the ancillary bits. There's a lot of engineering going into the new car."
