Junior British Karting Champion Riki Christodoulou kicks off his 2004 racing season in earnest this weekend by travelling to Brescia, Italy, to take part in the Garda Winter Cup.

The 15 year old, now competing in the senior ICA class often against much older and more experienced drivers, is looking for his second consecutive national crown this year as well as honours across the continent in Belgian, French, Italian and European Championships.

The first major outing for Team Christo will take place at South Garda at the end of this week for the prestigious Italian competition. Midlands born Christodoulou has been running his Kart through its paces for the last two days in southern Europe, an intense testing schedule that will continue through to qualification on Friday and the races over the weekend.

So far the Brit has been amongst the fastest four or five drivers from a massive entry list numbering over one hundred.

In warm and sunny conditions with newly laid asphalt and slight modifications to the Garda circuit, Christo has returned from a small holiday break keen to start his ’04 campaign on the right note and with a speed justifying his growing reputation as one of Britain’s brightest young motor racing stars.

“We’ve just come back from holiday and Riki said he was going to grab the bull by the horns, which he has done so far,” remarked father and team boss Rick Christodoulou. “We are pleased with the pace Riki is setting and with the amount of other drivers here is it great to see that we are one of the fastest. We still have one more day of testing to go and some people may not have yet shown their cards but we are pretty optimistic of a good result.”

“We are trying not to get too over-confident but he is driving well and we’re consistently working on the handling of the Kart to gain a few more tenths. The conditions in Italy have been good and now we are looking forward to Friday.”