Week three of our CKN Summer Tour 2014 is in the books as Mosport International Karting played host to a successful weekend of Eastern Canadian Karting Championship competition. The first round of the ECKC featured great turnouts in most classes and in turn great racing and battles for the win up until the final checkered flag.
Taking a couple days to digest everything that happened, here is our CKN News & Notes from the weekend at Mosport.
Excellent display with everyone watching
This weekends ECKC event fell on the same weekend at the Canadian Tire Motorsports Park (CTMP) Victoria Day SpeedFest event as thousands of motorsports fans travelled to the facility near Bowmanville, Ontario to take in the NASCAR Canadian Tire Series, Formula 1600 Super Series, Canadian Touring Car Championship as well as the Porsche GT3 Cup.
With all the fans and race teams on location, the ECKC racers put on a great show, showcasing our sport to the best of their abilities and helping expose it.
A number of kart racers were in action on the CTMP car track. Read about how they did here.
Great turnout with Briggs Classes continuing to grow
Last season we saw the emergence of the Briggs & Stratton Senior class as it grew race after race. At Mosport, the supporting Briggs classes continued the trend as Briggs Junior featured 15 drivers while Briggs Masters had 14, nearly doubling the turnout the classes had last season.
The largest turnout of the weekend was in Rotax Senior as an awesome 31 karts hit the track on Saturday.
International turnout spices up competition
This years Mosport event featured the largest turnout of international competition the ECKC has ever seen.
Rotax DD2 had a pair of these drivers on their podium as Italian Alessandro Bressan scored the victory for J3 Competition while Milan Dontje of the Netherlands was second for PSL Karting. DD2 also featured Americans Alan Rudolph, Gavin Reichelt and Michael Ilavia.
A second dutchman could be found in Rotax Junior as Rinus Van Kalmthout was very fast but found himself in trouble more often then not before ending the weekend on a high with a third-place podium result. Junior also featured American David Ilavia.
Mini-Max was dominated by American brothers Michael and Nicholas d’Orlando, with each of them taking a victory. On Saturday, Lachlan Defrancesco, who is Canadian but now lives in Florida, completed the podium while his BENIK Kart teammate David Morales was on the podium on Sunday in third place.
Finally, Jordan Lennox-Lamb was a huge addition to the Rotax Senior field as the driver from the United Kingdom was powered by a PSL Karting CRG machine, finishing fifth on Sunday while Dev Gorre and Ayrton Mutagaana were the pair of Americans in attendance.
Long race days take toll on paddock
Long race days were the talk of the paddock on Sunday as a full lineup of classes, along with a few holdups in the schedule, made for some very long races with both days action ending after 6:00PM and trophy presentations well after 7:00.
CKN Brand Ambassador makes season debut
Our 2014 CKN Brand Ambassador Coltin McCaughan made his season debut this weekend at Mosport. Sporting a new Bell Racing helmet painted by Polen Designs and a custom CKN/Cold Stone Creamery sticker kit, McCaughan placed himself right in the thick of things aboard his new SH Racing prepared FA Kart. He capped off the weekend with a solid fourth-place finish in the Rotax Senior Sunday Final.
Coltin will have the next edition of ‘Coltins Corner’ on the site later this week.
Micro & Mini-Max turnout down
One of the low points of the weekend was the small turnout in both the Micro-Max and Mini-Max categories. Only eight drivers could be found in our youngest division in the ECKC while Mini-Max wasn’t much higher with a total of eleven drivers.
We are slightly concerned about the turnout for the Goodwood rounds as the four American drivers in Mini-Max will not be in attendance due to a scheduling conflict.
With these classes suffering at the moment, there has been some talk in the paddock about ways to increase numbers at the youngest levels in Canadian karting.
New ECKC Series Director welcomed into the paddock with open arms
With the new season, the ECKC introduced their new Series Director, Tim Hannen. Officially welcomed at the Saturday drivers meeting, Hannen received a warm welcome and could be found communicating all weekend long with drivers, parents, officials and more. Hannen also managed the microphone for the podium presentations, adding a little flare and having the winners say a few words before receiving their trophies.
We look forward to seeing what else Tim brings to the series as our attention shifts to round two at Goodwood Kartways at the end of June.
Brrr, it was cold at Mosport!
It seems to be the norm when it comes to the opening round of the ECKC each year as tough weather continues to plague the series opener. We’ve seen snow, rain, hail and more. This year was no different as Mother Nature poured rain on the Mosport facility throughout the weekend, then dropped the temperatures and increased the wind on the weekend. Thankfully there was no rain for the race days, but everyone in the paddock was searching for as many layers as they could find to try and stay warm, including us in the CKN Lounge.
