Entering new territory for the third round of the 2014 European Championships, the KFJ and KZ classes travelled to a new karting facility in Sweden.
Two Canadian drivers were once again entered as Devlin Defrancesco and his Morsicani Racing TonyKart looked to regain the championship points lead he lost in round two, while Montreal’s Kami Moreira-Laliberte was also in action.
Qualifying wasn’t too kind to the both of them as Defrancesco was forced to a backup engine, qualifying 27th while Laliberte was 33rd in the class that featured 76 drivers. American Juan Manuel Correa placed his Energy Kart on the pole-position.
Going into attack mode through his heat races, Defrancesco had progressed nicely up the rankings, until a crash in his final heat race moved him from the top-ten all the way to eighteenth, relegating him to Prefinal B.
Luck was not on Laliberte’s side for his heat races. A constant struggled forced him into retirement more than once, falling all the way to 69th in the ranking and ultimately done for the weekend.
Progress was made in Defrancesco’s prefinal on Sunday morning where he advanced up to sixth place after starting ninth. This placed him twelfth on the grid entering the Final where he needed a strong result.
Unfortunately that luck did not come as contact in the opening laps forced Defrancesco to retire only four laps in, and his title chances took a huge hit.
Heading into the final round of the European KFJ Championships, Defrancesco now sits in third place, six points out of the lead, meaning he still has a shot when he hits the track at PFI in the UK at the end of August.
