#CanadianKartingChampionships
Rok Cup Report: SuperFinal Tickets Awarded to Race Winners
Menezes, Woods-Toth, Kennedy and Lerra score Rok Cup victories at the Canadian Karting Championships
Taking to the track in the afternoons all week long at the Mosport Karting Centre, 85 drivers were part of the Rok Cup Canada portion of the 2022 Canadian Karting Championships.
Tickets to the Rok Cup SuperFinal and Rok Vegas were up for grabs for those finishing on the podium and it was great to see both technical and brand support from Rok Cup USA in attendance.
After watching the morning classes deal with a passing rain shower and wet weather conditions, the air was clear in the afternoon and the Rok Cup racers had a clear track to deal with for their National Final races.
Rok Junior: Menezes Wins the Epic Rok Junior Brawl!
Taking the race of the day honours is Rok Junior. After a red flag on the initial start for a wild ride that saw Jonathon Petrone walk away, the group formed back up and restarted the race.
For the opening nine laps of the race, there were eight drivers all in contention to win and the positions changed nearly every corner.
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Rok Senior: Woods-Toth Scores First Canadian Championship Since 2015
We had to double-check the stats, but you read that headline correctly, Rok Senior driver Patrick Woods-Toth won his first Canadian Karting Championship since 2015 when he took the crown in Mini Max.
Over the past five years, Woods-Toth has been successful at just about every event he’s entered, dominating the Motomaster Ron Fellows Karting Championship with three straight championships, winning the Canadian Open as well as international competitions and even an online sim race title that scored him a ticket to the Rotax Grand Finals, but the Nationals have eluded him until this past Sunday.
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Rok Mini: Kennedy gets his second victory of the day after penalties to Ramalho
A pair of post-race penalties to Matheus Ramalho stripped him of his race victory in the Mini Rok Final at Mosport and awarded Edward Kennedy with his second Canadian National title of the day.
Ramalho (REM/Kart Republic) took the early race lead as six karts formed a lead pack. Matthew Roach (REM/Kosmic) didn’t wait long for his chance at the lead and he took it on lap two but Ramalho countered the pass a few corners later and regained the top spot.
Some great battling within the lead pack that featured Ramalho, Jackson Morley (Prime/BirelART), Christian Papp (VSR/LN Kart), Roach, Kennedy (TRT/Energy Kart) and Alexis Baillargeon (Blastforce/BirelART) was very exciting for those watching at the track.
At halfway three drivers emerged from the pack with Kennedy leading Ramalho and Morley, but Ramalho glued to the rear bumper of Kennedy for the next three laps and pushed away leaving it just the pair of them to settle the score. Navigating lap traffic posed a bit of a challenge but thankfully didn’t alter the race.
Kennedy and Ramalho would trade the lead all the way to the finish from there with Ramalho rounding the final corner with the advantage and hitting the finish line first.
But another race was decided by a pushback bumper infraction as Ramalho was accessed a five-second penalty for a pushback as well as a five-second penalty for contact and this awarded the win to Kennedy. Morley and Roach joined him on the podium while Baillargeon moved up to fourth and Ramalho back to fifth.
Rok Shifter: Lerra is going to the Rok Cup SuperFinal!
The usual shifter shenanigans were in full force this weekend as organizers added the TM M1 engine and Open Shifter to the event with a total of 19 drivers taking to the track.
Throughout the weekend two drivers emerged as contenders to win it all, Davide Greco (PSL/BirelART) on his M1 and Josh Conquer (Energy Kart) on his Rok Shifter.
The race started with Greco getting the jump into corner one while Conquer slipped back to third and had to recover his position quickly if he wanted any shot at the leader.
Five laps in and Greco had built up a lead of more than 1.5 seconds but Conquer started to inch back closer to him, lapping a tenth to two-tenths of a second quicker each lap as they neared the halfway mark.
Just past halfway, Greco was caught up from a lap kart and this allowed Conquer to close the gap and at the first opportunity he had, he pounced, taking the lead up the hill in corner seven.
Visibly distraught, Greco was unable to settle back in and Conquer pulled away to the victory in impressive fashion.
Following the race, Greco had some very choice words and gestures for the driver that held him up and he also voiced his displeasure during his victory interview in a very unprofessional manner. Sadly, no penalties were accessed to him for his actions.
Unfortunately for Conquer, his victory didn’t last too long. Upon arrival in tech, officials noticed the tires he chose to race on were not the tires he marked down on his pre-tech sheet and he was disqualified from the race. To clarify, the Shifter class was the only category to get a second set of tires this weekend and both he and Greco left the grid on brand new LeVanto tires.
This moved Dante Lerra (PSL/BirelART) onto the top of the Rok Shifter podium with Slavik Putiatin (PRO/CL Kart) and Marcello Paniccia (PRO/CL Kart) joining him in second and third.
Greco still scored the win over Jared Ramnarayan (PRO/CL Kart) and Jeffrey Petriello (TAG/CRG) in the 3-kart TM M1 division, while Alexandre Gauthier (CRT/BirelART) was awarded the Open Shifter Masters win over Giles Gallie (GP Kart) and Frederic Simard (TAG/CRG).
For the Rok Cup SuperFinal ticket winners, they will get to compete at the world-famous South Garda Karting circuit in Lonato, Italy on October 19-22.
