This Friday and Saturday at Lyss was the first round of the Schaffenhausen Kart Club championship. Rather unexpectedly, Marti managed to beat many of his last weekend competitors, but with a Junior engine against their Senior engines!
How did that happen? Once again in the Junior category there were just 2 drivers, but this time they had to drive with a Junior motor in the 125 Sport category where are all the X30 Senior racers. Two weeks ago for the Kappelen Trophy at the same track there were again just two Junior drivers, but they could drive with open motors in order to compete as equals with the rest. In theory, the best Marti could hope for was 9th place out the 10 racers in 125 Sport in case he was able to beat the other Junior driver. Mind you, for this race were entered most of the fastest X30 Senior drivers!
On Saturday morning before the official practice it rained – that’s Marti’s favorite weather! This time out we made a good wet setup and Marti surprised us with the 4th best time!
In time for qualifying the rain had stopped and the weather was quite hot, so we gambled on the track drying out fast and at the last moment we chose to use slick. Marti was the only driver on slicks!
The task in front of Marti was to keep on track during the first laps until the tires reached temperature and started working. Halfway through the session about 70% of the track was completely dry and the risk was paying off as Marti was constantly in the top 3. With every lap his lap times were improving by a lot and we even had some hope for a pole-position! Unluckily, the wet 30% part of the track became problematic. The entry for the tunnel and the shadowed part of the track was drying up very slowly. In Marti’s words, he entered the tunnel faster than the previous lap because he was feeling confident, but the kart starts sliding and instinctively he decides that the best move is to keep his foot on the gas and do a 360′. This is something he had been training how to do during the winter on the icey track, but this time there was too little space in the tunnel and he hit the wall. As a result the steering column and a steering arm was bent, while the other steering arm was torn apart.
Worse, because he was the cause of a red flag, he had his best time deleted and that sent him to P5 on the grid.
We managed to repair the kart in the little time before the first race. For this race weekend the schedule was quite packed and there were less than 20 min. between qualifying and the first race. We couldn’t find the correct steering column and we had to send out Marti without a front roll-bar.
Despite all of this, he fought bravely and saved his 5th place against the faster karts.
In time for the second race we managed to find the correct steering column and Marti had the kart properly setup. Still, he had the little issue of having a far less powerful Junior engine with which he had to fend off the far faster Seniors. In this second race he finished 6th after a lot of fighting and great defensive positioning. Marti was managing to position the kart in a way to defend his position without losing much time. During the whole race, just one Senior driver managed to pass him!
For the final third race Marti finished 7th, but he managed to register his best lap of the whole weekend on the very last lap. He could see he was safe from his persuers and concentrated just on fast times.
At the end after the 3 races of this 1st round of the Schaffenhausen championship Marti was classified 5th overall and 1st in Junior, but he had no competition there. Regretably, all Swiss Junior drivers are testing, but they’re avoiding racing before the start of the Swiss championship in more than 2 months time! For us, even though it was a club race, it proved to be a very valuable experience.
Finally, we want to thank Alfred Frommenwiler and his team RaceZone for supporting Martin!
