PR: KMS North America’s First Canadian Appearance

Ben Cooper finished a weekend sweep of DD2 with his second win on Sunday.
(Photo by: Cody Schindel/CKN)

Last weekend at Mosport Kart Circuit KMS North America made its first full appearance in Canada after a solid debut in the Florida Winter Tour. KMS had 3 drivers out for the first ECKC, Nataël Cantin in Junoir Max, Olivier Bedard in Senoir Max and its own Ben Cooper in DD2.

Saturdays racing started off with the DD2 qualifying where Ben was able to put in a time good enough for 2nd place on the grid for the Pre Final. Ben would drop back to 3rd at the start of the Pre Final but would retake 2nd going into the hairpin on the first lap. Taking just a couple of laps to catch the leader down Ben would take the lead and pull away to a reasonably comfortable win, putting himself pole for the Final. In the Final on a drying track Ben would take a clear victory by 3.6 seconds.

Nataël Cantin would qualify 6th in his first ever Jnr Rotax race in the ECKC series. A fantastic start to his weekend, how ever a mistake in the Pre Final while running in the top 10 would put him down the field, which meant that he would need a solid run in the Final to have a decent result. For the Final Nataël would make his way up to 8th place in wet conditions after some superb driving using his new rain driving skills that he learnt at the Academie Karting Jim Russell a few weeks prior to the race.

Olivier Bedard would continue the great start to his Snr Rotax career after his opening win to the Coupe Du Quebec 2 weeks prior to the ECKC at Mosport, by claiming pole position for Saturdays Pre Final. After a tricky race in the Pre Final, Olivier would finish 2nd behind another Birel driver from then REM Team, Kevin Montieth. The first few laps of the final were a real fight on a half dry half wet track and Olivier would have a tricky start to the race and would come back to finish 7th and take fastest lap of the Final.

Again Sunday’s racing action would start of with a dry DD2 qualifying and Ben Cooper would take pole position for what would be a wet Pre Final race. After a hard fought battle at the start Ben would win the Pre Final to start pole for the Final. The final was once again wet after a downpour 15 minutes before the start of the race. This race would be easier for Ben who was able to pull away at the front to double up his weekend taking wins on Saturday and Sunday.

“The weekends racing went well for me taking double wins. It has been a good start to the Canadian season and I hope we, as a team can continue to push on with our results.”

Nataël would qualify just outside the top 10 in 11th and would finish exactly where he started in the Pre Final. In the Final however Nataël came out on track looking like a different driver. After a poor start due to no fault of his own Nataël would come from 15th at the end of lap 1 all the way through to 6th making some excellent passing maneuvers on his way. A great way to finish his first Jnr Rotax ECKC weekend at a track he had to learn on Thursday testing.

Oliver Bedard would struggle in qualifying and the Pre Final, but made an excellent start of his wet Final to jump into the lead. Olivier would drop back to 2nd mid way through the race to finish there completing a Birel 1 2 finish.

“This weekend was my first time with the new KMS North America and I was very impressed with the organization of the team run by Peter Kalman and my team mate Ben Cooper. We worked well together and it is looking good for the future of this new team.”

The next event for KMS North America will be at SRA Karting for the Coupe du Quebec race 2 and then immediately after that the KMS North America team will be working alongside the Academie Karting Jim Russell with their Driver Camp from the 18th to the 25th for June in Mont Tremblant.