PR: Strong Line-Up and Strong Results for Team PSL Karting at the Cold Stone Rotax Pan American Challenge

Traveling to the heart of NASCAR country in North America, Mooresville, North Carolina, to test their drivers against the best in the Cold Stone Rotax Pan American Challenge, Team PSL Karting left with a bevy of top results. As the 2014 season draws to a close, this racing weekend at the GoPro Motorplex showed that Team PSL Karting will continue to be a force to be reckoned with as rookie drivers are becoming more seasoned, and seasoned drivers are becoming even more competitive.

In Micro Max, Justin Arseneau had an excellent qualifying and continued to have a great, race-winning potential of a pace all week, with a third place in Super Pole, and finishing top-ten in all three of his heats. An incident would cause the young driver to not finish in the prefinal, and finish 16th in the final. Arseneau may lack the experience of some of his peers, but is growing into a name to remember quickly.

PSL Karting Team Manager, Andrew Campbell had nothing but positive things to say about the young up-and-coming driver, “What a year for Justin, in his first official full season of racing, he’s been at the front, competing with the top competitors in Micro without any issues. Considering his experience, he is pushing himself every session, and it will only be a matter of time before his moment to shine will arrive.”

The Mini Max class saw two drivers sporting Team PSL Karting colours: newcomer Filip Niemkiewicz and Sebastian Alvarez. Alvarez had a weekend that had about as many turns as the Mooresville track did, qualifying fouth, a DNF in heat one, then finishing in the top-11 through the remaining heats and the prefinal. In the final however, after shuffling through the pack, Alvarez finished 21st. Niemkiewicz took to the weekend with speed, and didn’t lift his foot up all weekend, beginning with a third place qualifying and fifth in the Super Pole. He continued to finish sixth in the first two heats, then eighth in heat three. Consistently working to move up through the field, Niemkiewicz finished with a strong seventh place in the main event, against a stout field on Mini Max drivers.

Justin Arseneau made great strides in his first full year of karting (Photo by: Cody Schindel/CanadianKartingNews.com)

“It was Filip’s first time aboard a CRG, and it was like he was right at home. Competing on the most talked about chassis in the industry, his PSL Mini X2 was on rails all week. Filip meshed well with the team, and we look forward to his results in 2015,” added Campbell.

In Rotax Senior, Jules Cousin and Dalton Sargeant took to the Cold Stone Rotax Pan Am Challenge in their Blackstar X2 chassis. Cousin had a rougher go in qualifying, finishing 14th but made some changes, and by heat one was back up to eighth position. The difficult field would shuffle him back to the top-15 positions throughout the heats, but he pulled it together for the prefinal to finish in ninth place. However, an incident would bring all of Cousin’s hard work to a DNF in the final. Returning to the karting scene with the PSL/CRG outfit, Dalton Sargeant had his share of bad luck in the third heat of the weekend with a DNF, but that race proved to be an outlier as he was consistently in the top of the talented group of Senior drivers throughout the entirety of the weekend, including a fifth place qualifying and third in the Super Pole. Sargeant was ready to take on the final, and turned the fastest lap, not only once, but through every lap of the final, placing him in a well-earned third position podium finish.

DD2 was Team PSL Karting’s most stacked category, housing six of its drivers under their tent. Jeffrey Kingsley took second place in both qualifying and the Super Pole, then had consistent third and fourth place finishes throughout the first two heats, but would have back-to-back DNFs in the prefinal and final. Up-and-comer Gavin Reichelt took first in qualifying and fourth in the Super Pole. He would shuffle through the field from the front to the end of the top-ten throughout the heats and prefinal, but ended with the team’s best DD2 finish in the final, finishing on the podium in third. Eugene Brittz wasn’t far behind, and finished in the fourth position in the final after a consistently quick weekend. Alessandro Bizzotto danced around the top-ten all weekend, but found his lines and made his way to his best finish of the weekend in the final, in seventh position. Alan Rudolph was practicing against his younger counterparts in DD2 for the weekend in preparation for the Rotax MAX Challenge Grand Finals (RMCGF) coming up in November. Rudolph began his weekend with a 13th place qualifying position, but continued to pass his way through the field, as well as his teammates, gaining positions throughout the weekend, and finishing fifth in the prefinal. Rudolph was disqualified after the final after respectfully declining tech inspection.

Andre Fonseca would round out the driver lineup for Team PSL Karting in Mooresville, and in DD2 Masters qualified first and then wouldn’t back down from the top-three all weekend. Fonseca made it to second place in the prefinal and held on through the final to also finish as the Pan Am Vice-Champion. The weekend was more than enough to gain the driver a ticket to the RMCGF as well.

Andre Fonseca earned the DD2 Masters Vice-Championship and a ticket to the Rotax MAX Challenge Grand Finals (Photo by: Cody Schindel/CanadianKartingNews.com)

This weekend in Mooresville was successful for Team PSL Karting’s tent not only in top finishes and tickets to world championships, but also in showing the talent that these CRG drivers possess. The talent and equivalent drive in improvement and willingness to do everything to win proves what a force to be reckoned with Team PSL Karting will continue to be, not only at the final race on the 2014 calendar, the SuperKarts! USA SuperNationals, but also well into the 2015 season.

Team PSL Karting will be trackside in 2014 at the SKUSA SuperNationals. Team PSL Karting is associated with CRG, Maxter Kart Engines, Rotax, Tillett Racing Seats, Sniper, Unipro, Douglas Wheels, Vega, MG Tires, Arai, Freem, Alfano, D.I.D. Racing Chains, Briggs & Stratton, KG and ORG.

To learn more about the World’s #1 CRG distributor, sales & service, arrive & drive opportunities, PSL racing engines or dealer opportunities, please visit www.pslkarting.com or www.pslkartingusa.com.