Air under the wheels at iDube

SOUTH Africa’s karters gathered at the tight 1,05 km iDube track near Pietermaritzburg for the first round of the 2020 national championship and the right to represent South Africa at the delayed “Olympics of Karting” — the Rotax Max Grand Finals at Portimao in Portugal on January 29. Each of the seven classes saw practice rounds followed by four heats. With only 14 rounds in the SA championship, of which four results can be dropped, the racing was intense for all ages, with shunts and wheels lifting off as the racers pushed their karts hard even in the Mini class, where Ghazi Motlekar saw off a hard-pushing pack, which was narrowly led by Klayden-Cole Ensor-Smith in second place overall, and Luviwe Sambudla in third place. In the Bambino class, Mattao Mason won, ahead of Aiden Beaumont and Harry Rowe. Always a treat to watch, the Bambinos take the racing very seriously indeed, flinging their karts into the corners at speeds of 77 km/h. Caleb Moss set the fastest time of 48,118 seconds around the track, only two seconds off the pace of the “big boys’ karts”. The Micro Max class was won by Reese Koorsen, followed by Keagan Beaumont and Caleb Odendaal. Muhammad Wally won the Junior Max, followed by Nikolas Roos and Dhivyen Naidoo. They were chased by Aqil Aliba and Juandre Nel. During the qualifiers, there was only 0,4 of a second difference in the first five spots of these hard-driving juniors. The Senior Max class saw Shrien Naidoo take the podium, followed by Charl Visser and Brent Waldon. The DD2 Masters was won by Nick Verheul followed by Jonathan Pieterse and Shane Foley. The nine-kart field saw less than two seconds difference in their overall laptimes. In the DD2 class, Durban’s former world champion Christiano Margado took the podium, followed by Bradley Liebenberg and Robert Whiting. The Max Masters has perhaps the hardest racing, Shane Foley garnered 42 points in the day’s three races, followed by Richard van Heerde (36) and Richard Horner (26), with female racer Beverly van Heerde (25) one point behind in fourth place. The day’s racing was streamed live and can be viewed on kart.co.za.