ECKC: Briggs & Stratton Senior Championship Shaken Up at ICAR

The largest category of the Eastern Canadian Karting Championship weekend once again provided the most exciting racing as the Briggs & Stratton Senior class continues to draw attention and new drivers from region to region. While many of the front-runners from the series opener at Goodwood competed at ICAR, there was an abundance of new faces on the grid as the interest in the cost-friendly and intensely competitive LO206 program builds across the nation.

There was a family face on the pole-position after Qualifying as Jean-Francois Lafontaine (BirelART) nixed the Herder brothers by just over a tenth of a second.

Lafontaine and Pearce Herder (Awesome Kart) broke free in the PreFinal after Kyle Herder (Awesome Kart) found trouble down in corner three attempting a pass for the lead on lap two. Mathieu Demers (Kosmic) and Jon Treadwell (K&K Kart) advanced up to positions three and four while Michael Forget (Margay) was fifth.

The jockeying of positions in the Final made it difficult for anyone to keep track. Lafontaine held the point with Simon Belanger (FA Kart), Demers and Pearce Herder in tow, but the action for fourth on back was purely exciting. Unfortunately for Treadwell, he fell out early after losing his exhaust silencer.

The race for the win came down to Lafontaine and Demers, who was running without a exhaust silencer, and Belanger while Herder failed to make a move in corner seven stick and lost the leaders. Lafontaine defended well and scored his second win of the season over Belanger, after Demers was excluded in tech for the missing silencer. Herder barely held to third over Mike De La Plante. Kyle Herder recovered to finish fifth, with Forget, Tom Cadieux (Intrepid), Charlotte Lalonde (Margay), Chad Campbell (GP Kart) and Zach Boam (GP Kart) completing the top-ten.

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Sunday was a much different story. The group was very much the same up front after qualifying, but a big accident at the start of the PreFinal took out six of the main contenders.

Lafontaine, Pearce and Kyle Herder, Kyle Edgar (BirelART), De La Plante and Demers were all victim of corner three and none were able to continue, forcing them to start the Final from the tail of the 27-kart grid.

Belanger survived the melee of a Prefinal to claim the win over Sebastien Laviolette (CRG), Forget, Treadwell and Boam.

The front four got the jump at the start and were joined by Lalonde in a five-kart race for the lead. Treadwell linked onto the rear bumper of Belanger on lap three, after working by Laviolette and the two were able to break free while Laviolette has his hands full of Lalonde and Forget.

Settling down until the final two laps when Treadwell made his move to the lead in corner four, the final two-thirds of the lap get very exciting. The battle for the lead allowed Lalonde, Laviolette and Forget to catch up as all five entered the final corner hoping to come out in the lead.

Treadwell erupted from the dust to win the drag race to the finish line with Belanger on his rear bumper, edging Forget by one-hundredth of a second at the finish line for second. Laviolette claimed fourth while Boam snuck by Lalonde for fifth. Lafontaine, Kyle Herder and Pearce Herder were only able to recover and claim seventh, eighth and ninth while Richard Schumacher closed out the top-ten.

After his excellent weekend at Goodwood where he never finished worse than second, Kyle Edgar couldn’t wait to leave ICAR followed a disastrous weekend that concluded with a DNF on Sunday.

After a tough start to the season Jon Treadwell returned to the top of the ECKC podium on Sunday (Photo by: Cody Schindel/CKN)