in Belgium
Team manager, Paul Spencer hailed all six of his drivers’ performances a success in the fourth round of the Winning Series Karting Championship at Genk, Belgium last week (11-14 June) saying, “I’m really excited about the talent in the team right now. We have some of the best drivers in Europe in the Tony Kart Junior Team right now and all of them drove superbly, all weekend.”
In KF2, the team’s Ben Cooper, Chris Lock and Italian star Matteo Beretta all took heat wins and comfortably qualified for the pre-final, with Ben storming through from 10th on the grid to take the win. Chris also moved forward from his starting grid position to take 5th, whilst Matteo was the biggest improver, coming from the 12th row to cross the finishing line in a respectable 14th place.
Cooper, a student at the highly regarded Oxford Brookes University in England, completed a perfect day by winning the main final and taking the series lead with three rounds to go.
Chris pushed his identical Racer EVR/Vortex hard in his team-mate’s wake to take the chequered flag in a solid 4th place, whilst Matteo brought his Tony Kart home in 9th.
In the KF3 class, Carlos Sainz, Guilherme Silva and Gustavo Menezes all performed with typical Latin verve, Strong throughout qualifying and the heats, the trio qualified for the pre-final with Gustavo putting his kart down on P3 of the grid. Nearby, Carlos would start from 7th on the grid with Guilherme directly behind him.
Unfortunately, it was not be a race of good fortune for Carlos - who did not finish - or Guilherme, who could only bring his kart home in 18th. However, Gustavo’s luck held and he was able to deliver an excellent 3rd place for the team.
His father is known as El Matador in their native Spain, and young Carlos demonstrated the same bravery and fighting spirit that earned his father the sobriquet, with a superb drive through the field from 32nd to 8th place. Also demonstrating that he is a huge talent for the future, Guilherme drove beautifully to take the chequered flag in 2nd place. Unfortunately, Gustavo was excluded for a minor technical infringement at the start.
Speaking from inside the Tony Kart Junior Team’s impressive awning, Paul Spencer said “On the whole, Genk went very, very well. Ben was extremely good, although he did make a mistake in qualifying. But it is a mark of his quality that he knew what he had done wrong and did everything in his power to overcome it and in the racing, he was impeccable. He did his job brilliantly.”
“Chris is improving every time he goes out on track. He was 4th in the second final, faster than Ben and has moved himself up into 4th in the championship points. It’s all looking really good for him.”
Commenting on his KF3 charges, Paul said “Carlos’ electrics failed whilst he was running at the front in the pre-final. He showed tremendous ability and character to fight his way from the back of the main final grid to inside the top ten. As a result of that, he’s third overall in the points.”
“I’ll tell you one thing that sums up Guilherme” he smiled. “After Ben won the second KF2 final, Guilherme ran across the circuit over to Ben and asked him for advice about the track conditions before the start of the KF3 main final. That’s very smart.”
He added, “Prior to the main final, Gustavo had been going brilliantly and what I saw from each of the drivers has given me reason to be very excited about the rest of the season.”
