Heavy rain could not slow down the 100 Briggs racers taking part in the opening round of the 2024 Coupe de Montreal championship at SH Karting over the weekend with four drivers starting their season with a victory.
In dry Qualifying on Saturday afternoon, the Briggs Senior division required two groups as 44 drivers entered the event. Track evolution was evident as drivers in group two scored the top eight positions, led by Premier Karting teammates Steven Navratil and Ari Korkodilos.
From the inside of the front row, Korkodilos converted his PreFinal race into a win and secured himself a great starting position for the main event on Sunday after just narrowly beating Dylan Ruaud to the finish line. In the other PreFinal Leopold Schrevel moved past Navratil to take the win and the top-15 finishers from each PreFinal directly advanced to the Final and the rest required a Last Chance Race.
It wasn’t a nice arrival to the circuit on Sunday morning as dark clouds loomed overhead, a mist was in the air and it was so damp that half the racers decided to use rain tires for the Last Chance Race even though the track was still dry. Those rain tires turned out to be the correct call as the mist turned into light rainfall and the track became very slick, very quickly. Mickael Aubin Poirier controlled the race from the outset and was one of six drivers to advance to the afternoon Final.
Entering corner one after the green flag, Korkodilos ran wide and fell all the way to the tail of the field as Schrevel led the pack down the short straight to corner two.
On a charge early, Jaden Harry, the defending Canadian Briggs Senior Champion, made quick work of Navratil on lap one and then slipped up the inside of Schrevel before corner two on lap two to secure the race lead.
With consistent rain falling, the challenging conditions caught a lot of drivers off guard throughout the midpack, but up front, it was smooth sailing for Harry. He pulled away from Schrevel and only had to navigate some lap traffic en route to his first victory of the season and the first victory for the newly formed JMF Karting team.
His JMF teammate Josh Conquer was second to cross the finish line but he had a pushback bumper penalty knock him back to fourth in the final results and moved Schrevel back into second place while Antoine Lacharite completed the podium with a great drive. Vasil Tchiplakov started back in the 20th position and impressively climbed his way up to fifth in the final results.
In Junior Briggs, Mindy Croteau led every single lap to secure her first victory of the season with a drive that impressed the ASQ and awarded her the Driver of the Day. Elliot Coulombe kept close to her throughout the 14-lap sprint but was never close enough to mount an attack and had to settle for runner-up. Third place went to Maxime Fusco who ran the second half of the race alone following contact between Derek Lerouche and Ethan Gawronski that knocked both of those drivers out of the top five and out of contention.
William Choquette pulled off a last-lap pass on Jayden Colligan in the Briggs Cadet Final to score his first win of the season at SH. It was a three-kart battle for most of the race with Liam Fontaine also in the mix but at the checkered, it was Choquette followed by Colligan and then Fontaine until a penalty was accessed to Colligan for contact that relegated him back to third place on the podium. Fourth and fifth went to Brodie McDonell and Jackson Colligan.
Finally, in Briggs Masters, Anthony Novak led from flag to flag to score the victory. It was a dominating performance as he crossed the finish line 5.1 seconds ahead of second place, Eric Lessard. Mario Martin rounded out the podium while Mike Larouche and Daniel Courtemanche completed the top five.
Round two of the Coupe de Montreal will run at the ICAR Circuit on June 1-2.
Don’t forget to sign up for your Coupe de Montreal Photo Package on the CKN store, http://canadiankartingnews.com/store
