ECKC: Ben Cooper Dominates to Complete DD2 Championship Repeat

The final major karting event of the Canadian season wrapped up this past weekend as the Eastern Canadian Karting Championship completed another at the Jim Russell Karting Academy in beautiful Mont-Tremblant, QC. It was a cool and overcast weekend as the event hosted the Coupe du Quebec on Saturday before setting up the ECKC Championship finale with some classes coming down to the wire for titles and for who would join Team Canada for the Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals.

Entering the weekend, Ben Cooper (KMS/Birel) all but had the Rotax DD2 championship wrapped up, scoring victories in four of the five rounds thus far. Originally electing just to start, things changed on the grid of the prefinal and Cooper decided to have a go. Starting from the rear of the grid, Cooper quickly went to work and before halfway of the prefinal he was into second and tracking down the leader of Gavin Reichelt (PSL Karting/CRG). Reichelt did all he could to keep the World Champion behind him, but in the end it was no match and Cooper won the heat.

The Final saw Cooper time the start perfect and jump out to an early lead with Reichelt second and Alessandro Bizzotto (PSL Karting/CRG) third. The front three broke away with Cooper stretching an early lead. Behind, action would see Maranello teammates Fred Woodley and Brendon Bain gathered in some trouble as would American Fritz Leesman (PSL Karting/CRG).

Cooper would drive away to victory to secure his second straight ECKC Rotax DD2 crown. Bizzotto made a late push but ran out of steam allowing Reichelt to take second Bizzotto to earn to first ECKC podium in third.

With Cooper already qualified for the Grand Finals, Championship runner-up Bain will join Team Canada in New Orleans while Woodley completed the championship podium in third as Marco Di Leo did not compete this weekend in DD2.

The event caps off yet another successful year for the ECKC, showing growth at nearly every event this year. With a strong support and huge growth in the Briggs & Stratton classes as well as growth in the youngest categories of Rotax, the series has plenty to look back on this year as we know it is already looking forward to 2014!

Rotax DD2 Championship Podium
(Photo by: Cody Schindel/CKN)