The second championship series to hit the streets of Trois-Rivieres, Quebec this weekend was the Eastern Canadian Karting Championship. After Saturday’s Coupe du Quebec round, the inter-provincial series took their turn and provided the many fans on site some great racing action all day. Once again Mother Nature played games with everyone in the paddock as rain threatened all day and even drizzled down multiple times during the day but never enough to force drivers to rain tires.
The third round of the ECKC set the tone not only for their final round of the championship, held in September in Mont-Tremblant, but also it was the final major race before this years Canadian National Karting Championships, held at Goodwood Kartways in Ontario.
After earning the pole-position in Qualifying, Antonio Serravalle (Pserra Racing/TonyKart) was pushed wide on entry to the second corner on the first lap. This allowed Tommy Simard (TonyKart) to take the lead as Serravalle returned to the track at the rear of the field. Trouble then found the leader as Simard would go off, and his race over with Thierry Cote now in control up front. Cote waged a great battle with Andres Felipe De Alba (Zanardi) for the lead, but Cote would hold on, with JP Hutchinson (TonyKart) taking third, and Samuel Lupien (CSL/Birel) and Andre Foteas (Tecno) completing the top-five.
Cote converted pole into an early lead in the fnal ahead of De Alba, Hutchinson, and Lupien, as Simard crashed into a spinning Toranosuke Hamada (KMS/Birel) in turn one, ending his race. On the second lap De Alba took the lead away from Cote and started to pull away, putting a three kart length lead on the recent Western Canadian Champion. Serravalle, who started at the rear, made his way up to third by lap eight getting by Hutchinson and Lupien. Joe Soranno was also enjoying a good race as was running in the top five by the halfway point.
With five laps to go Serravalle closed the gap to the leaders of De Alba and Cote. Next time by, Cote and Serravalle got by De Alba demoting him to third. With Serravalle pressuring Cote for the lead on the final lap, the two made contact coming down the large back straight towards corner seven. With neither driver giving an inch as they went for the win, Cote crashed hard into the barriers and Serravalle spun in the process. With De Alba entering the corner with nowhere to go, he ran over Cote and Lupien snuck through for the lead and the win. De Alba limped his bent axle driven kart to second and Serra third as Cote’s race ended in the barriers.
For De Alba, a technical issue in post-race tech excluded him from the results and this moved Soranno onto the podium with Lupien on top and Serravalle second.
