It’s a brisk and very windy day at the SimRaceway Karting Center in Sonoma, California for the SKUSA Pro Tour SpringNationals. The temperatures have decreased marginally since drivers and teams arrived in Sonoma with today being the coolest by far.
Qualifying for race day one is complete with the cool temps, along with increased Evinco rubber, speeding up the track.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the Canadians in attendance.
Greenemeier quickest in X30 Junior as Canadians struggle
The timing screens were blinking throughout the entire X30 Junior qualifying session as the track continued to come to the drivers. Hannah Greenemeier of Colorado topped the charts with a 50.282. Initially it was Tyler Gonzalez on top, however he lost his fastest lap for bump-drafting, although he only fell to fourth. Jacob Hudon, Dylan Tavella and Pedro Lopes rounded the top-five.
It was a tough go for the pair of Canadians as Thomas Nepveu could only muscle the 19th quickest time while Thomas Simard was left scratching his head, ranking 32nd, albeit only eight-tenths of a second off the fastest time.
Extremely tight Qualifying in X30 Senior
The top-ten drivers were only separated by two-tenths of a second in X30 Senior Qualifying as young gun Nick Brueckner of Texas was the quickest. Jacob Gulick, Ryan Norbert, Zach Holden, Michael Avansino and Jake Craig were all within a tenth of Brueckner’s 50.168 second lap.
Kellen Ritter and Ryan MacDermid were ninth and tenth as the highest ranking Canadians while Samuel Lupien was fourteenth. Further down, Cedrik Lupien was 30th and Logan Cusson 34th.
“We had the pace to set a faster lap but constant mistakes on my end cost us a higher position. But P9 in a 40+ kart field is good for now, but what matters is where we end up after the prefinal.”
– Kellen Ritter
Mazzaferro 7th in S2; Choquer 16th in X30 Master; Curran way back in Mini Swift
In only his second start in S2 Stock Moto, Gianfranco Mazzaferro is enjoying his time shifting gears and has shown great pace through practice. He ranked seventh in qualifying in the Semi-Pro shifter class.
On the other hand, Dale Curran has been struggling this weekend and in Mini Swift Qualifying he was 37th of the 41 drivers. He can really only go up from here and hopefully he does.
Leading the championship points entering the weekend, Blake Choquer has a disappointing sixteenth place effort in X30 Masters Qualifying. We will be watching to see him work his way back forward.
