Tristan Crisan Runs Away with Mini Max Victory at Canadian Open

Making the most of his trip back home this summer, Ilie Tristan Crisan put forth a fantastic drive in the Rotax Mini Max Final at the Canadian Open to secure the title and earn his first invitation to compete on Team Canada at the Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals.

Crisan (Premier/TonyKart) has been busy racing this season in Europe with the official TonyKart Racing Team but returned to Canada for a family event and it timed perfectly with the Canadian Open, putting his name amongst a solid group of racers in the Rotax Micro-Mini Max division.

Super Pole Qualifying was led by Edward Kennedy (TRT/Energy Kart) who just narrowly edged out Antoine Lemieux (Racing Edge Motorsports/Kosmic) and Brando Londono (HMP/Kart Republic) setting the tone for what was going to be a very close race at the top.

Lemieux scored the first heat win and remained consistent to score the pole position for Sunday while Crisan won the second and third heats to help overcome his 13th-place result in heat one.

There were consistently seven karts in the mix at the front and the PreFinal was another display of how competitive Mini Max was this weekend as Crisan beat Rayan Ghandour (KR/Kosmic) to the finish line by 0.099 seconds after a chaotic final two laps of wheel to wheel battling amongst the lead pack.

However, after a weekend of great battles for P1 leading up to the Final, the main event wound up being for runner-up as Crisan got to the lead early and checked out when the battle for second heated up.

That battle was between Ghandour and Lemieux as the two traded the second position back and forth on laps three, four and five until Alexis Baillargeon (Blastforce/BirelART) overtook them both on lap eight as Ghandour slipped back to sixth in the process with Kennedy and Londono also able to get by.

As the laps wound down from there, Lemieux snuck by Baillargeon on the final lap to regain second while Ghandour recovered to fourth just ahead of Kennedy and Londono, who overtook Olivier Chasse (HMP/Kart Republic) on the final lap as well.

But a number of penalties were issued after the race and shook up the overall rankings. Crisan received a jump start penalty of three seconds, but his six-second margin of victory overcame that and he kept the win.

Lemieux remained in second place while Ghandour was elevated to third when Baillargeon received a five-second penalty for contact. Finally, Kennedy and Chasse completed the top five after Londono had a lane violation penalty at the start.

With two tickets still up for grabs at Hamilton we know this great battle isn’t done yet in Micro-Mini Max and we hope this entire group will be back on track for the Canadian Championships in August.