The Killarney kart racing circuit is notoriously difficult in terms of getting the near-perfect lap, and at the first round. A combination of tight hairpins and fast sweeps means that the slightest mistake in any of the corners can have a huge influence on laps times.
Thus home circuit knowledge proved to be the trump card in most of the race categories at the first of the four-round SA Rotax Max Challenge 2016 National karting championship.. The meeting drew an impressive entry in all classes, proof-positive that karting in South Africa is providing a solid base to a career in serious motorsport.
In addition, the organisers introduced new scanning technology for chassis, engine, tyres, fuel and ECU units (for ignition mapping on the motors) ensuring that the Rotax reputation for absolute equality of equipment reached even higher levels. And, not incidentally, made the race organisers’ jobs a lot easier in pre-and post-race scrutineering
Junior Max. The highly competitive Junior Max category for drivers aged 13 to 16 years old drew an impressive 23 entries. Just two-tenths of a second separated the top seven drivers in qualifying Sebastian Boyd, Dario Busi, Jason Coetzee Luca Munaretto , Cameron O’Connor, Sam Luchoff and Dominic Lincoln, with less than a second separating the top 12 drivers!
Boyd was out to make this race meeting his own right from the get-go, and he parlayed his pole position in qualifying by taking three straight wins. But the on-track action was far more interesting than this bald statistic. Boyd seemed to have the slightest of edges, but Coetzee and Busi weren’t about to accept this situation in Race Two, which led to the biggest drama of the day. The two rivals indulged in some argy-bargy of such a serious nature that Busi was excluded from the day’s racing while Coetzee was excluded for Race Two. Needless to say this seriously dents these top two drivers’ championship chances, in this four-round series, Where Nine races in total need to be counted towards championship totals.
After these exclusions, Daniel Duminy, the KZN driver, had a difficult first race but bounced back to score a second and third place for the day. Blaine Rademeyer was third, followed by JP Hamman, thus locking out three of the top four places for Cape-based drivers, while Karl Pitzer from Mozambique was fifth and Dominique Lincoln sixth.
Senior Max Challenge.Once again the locals proved a tough nut to crack for the Gauteng racers. Benoni-based Delon Thompson and Cape Town’s Dino Stermin were the pace setters here, but the top five were rarely separated by more than two seconds after three hard fought races. In the first race, Delon Thompson ran out the winner from Delano Fowler but the very impressive Dino Stermin signalled his title intentions with wins in Race Two and Race three to take the overall in for the day. Fowler was third, after a second place and two thirds in the three races, Jordan Sherratt fourth, Fabienne Lanz fifth and Chadley Schwartz was sixth.
Apart from the vastly experienced Fabienne Lanz, Senior Max is characterised by having three very competitive female drivers, and both Ivana Cetinic and Shannon Jackson acquitted themselves well at the tricky Killarney circuit which very definitely favours local knowledge.
The DD2 Class drew 20 entries, once again illustrating the healthy state of affairs in the Rotax karting series, with this two-speed gearbox class being the top karting category at National Championship level. This season the Masters category for drivers aged over 32 years old sees them competing to the same weight limit as the youngsters (drivers 15 years old and over), and this has meant that the quicker Masters can in fact mix it with some of the front-running younger drivers here.
But at Cape Town there was no stopping local ace Julian van der Watt as he racked up three impressive wins in three races, although he was pressed extremely hard by last year’s DD2 champ from Gauteng, Bradley Liebenberg. In both the second and third races Liebenberg finished just seven tenths of a second behind Van der Watt. Michael Stepehn competes in the DD2 Masters category and he was relishing the new lighter weight limit for older drivers. The Port Elizabeth driver, who came so close to winning the World Championship last year in this category, claimed second place in the first heat and ended third overall for the day, as well as a clear winner in the Masters race-within- a -race.
Local charger Jurie “Umpie” Swart, KZN’s Benjamin Habig, Jonathan Thomas and Justin Alison were all super-quick as usual, this bunch finishing just out of touch of Van der Watt and Liebenberg up front.
Rounding out the top five positions in DD2 Masters (after Stephen) were Jonathan Pieterse, Marouan Selmi, Pascal Acquaah and Nicholas Verheul.
The Maxterino class for drivers aged eight to 13, with 60 cc engines, is super-strong in Cape Town and drew an impressive 22 entries. Young Joseph Oelz, a local ace, was out to take no prisoners and he too made a clean sweep of wins to place himself at the head of the 2016 Rotax series championship table. Charl Visser was extremely quick too, and scored a pair of second places, but a coming-together in Race Two saw him unfortunately finish the day in seventh place overall.
The top six, after Olez, was filled by Kai van Zyl, Troy Dolinschek, Tate Bishop (very impressive in qualifying and second in Race Two), Jason MacBeath and Kwanda Mokoena, the quick Gauteng-based driver. In Race two, whilist Olez strung out a small gap, the other top seven finishers were covered by just on two seconds after 12 laps!
As a first, the race meeting was streamed live on the internet, so you could watch it anywhere in the word. The meeting will also be screened on Ignition TV in the coming weeks.
Rotax Hi-Tech
As mentioned earlier in this report, new technology developed by the Austrian parent company Rotax helped enormously in the race meeting organisation, as well as making competitors’ lives easier over a busy race weekend.
* Online entries enable competitors in future to enter for events painlessly because their personal and machinery details are stored and so for the next event they need only to edit any changes to their details and press “enter”.
* This means that -commentators and media will have access to the drivers’ profiles in future
* Organizers can now quickly scan in bar-coded engine numbers, engine seals, chassis seals and individual bar coded tyres and all the additional equipment registered to a particular driver. Thereafter quick checks before and after heats ensures that no equipment is changed or even swapped out between drivers – critical to ensure fairness
* In the past fuel needed to be supplied by organizers to try to prevent the use of illegal additives but new rules and equipment now make a quick and accurate test, ruling out funny business.
*An ECU testing device supplied by Rotax quickly confirms if the engine mapping is legal – taking less than a minute to complete the whole process
* Mandatory new front bumper mountings clearly show if a competitors has bumped into anything (significantly a competitor ahead of him or her) and a 10 second penalty is automatically imposed. This really has improved the standard of racing over the Cape Town weekend with far less incidents and no serious accidents.
* The new Micro and Mini Max classes had a combined fun event at the end of the National race programme to show-case the classes of the future. Competitors from Maxterino and Mini Rok classes teamed up and shared demo Rotax powered Mini Max and Micro Max karts to taste the future. Although only a fun event, the Mini Max karts soon recorded lap times faster than the existing National classes for this age group. Fun and a little chaos was enjoyed by all! The racing will however become more serious in the future when the youngsters fight it out to qualify for an invite to the 2016 Rotax Max Challenge Grand Final in Italy.
