The ship Pendennis Castle arrived in Durban harbour in late 1962. Tony Jefferies and John Love were there to see SB1619 and the Cooper T55 being off-loaded. “I was perhaps a little disappointed with the car at first sight as the factory had not had time to paint it, and I was very indignant when one of the dock hands asked if it was made out of paraffin tins!!,” Jefferies wrote in the Dunlop Rhodesian Gazette.

Only days after arriving on the African continent, SB1619 was to be entered in the 1962 Rhodesian Grand Prix meeting, but the car suffered from teething problems. The next race was the Rand Grand Prix meeting at Kayalami race track outside Johannesburg in South Africa. Jefferies completed several races in 1962 and early 1963, both in South Africa and in Rhodesia. At the Natal Grand Prix at Westmead race track outside Durban in 1963, Jefferies finished second in his class and third overall in SB1619, after having spent the whole night repairing the engine after a failure during practice.

“My greatest thrill be-ing when Colin Chapman (Mr. Lotus himself) congratulated me after the prize-giving; a request for the job of tea boy at the Lotus factory was, unfortunately, turned down – apparently there is a queue for that job as well!!,” wrote Tony Jefferies.

Tony Jefferies continued to race SB1619. On Saturday 28 September 1963, Jefferies and John Love entered the car in the first Rhodesian Six Hour Endurance Race. The race was part of the “St. John Ambulance Trophy – Open National Motor Race Meeting”, at Marlborough race track outside Salisbury (today Harare). SB1619 had been slightly modified to qualify. The class demanded that the body of the car was of a particular width. Jefferies and Love solved this by attaching aluminium doors to the body of the Lotus. The car was entered as 22 in the race. There were a number of interesting cars taking place in the race: Lotus XI, AC Bristol, Fairthorpe Zeta, Sunbeam Alpine, Standard Ten, AH Sprite, etc. In the picture taken just before the race, the Lotus XI is standing next to SB1619.

During the six hours of the race, Jefferies and Love managed to cover no less than 459 miles in SB1619 – and they won! Jefferies and Love drove with sponsorship, and a few days after their win, oil company Shell published a full page advert in the local press under the headline “Another Shell Success – congratulations to Johnny Love and Tony Jefferies”, picturing John Love inside SB1619 and Tony Jefferies standing next to the car. On 29 September 1963, the local Sunday Mail newspaper carried an article with the heading “Jefferies and Love win tough test”.