The fifth round of the Schaffhausen karting championship took place at the 1100 m long track Vesoul in France. This was a track Marti drove in the winter and we all had high hopes because he had very competitive times.
The weekend started very promising, Marti was P3 in the Saturday free practice day. He was just 0.3 from the leader Ramon von Rohr, a smaller gap than the previous weekend and things were looking promising especially as there was a chance of rain on Sunday.
But from here on things just went in the wrong direction, from bad to worse.
Sunday started with the qualifying session, but on the outlap the chain broke and Marti had no time recorded to his name! This meant he had to start dead last.
The first race Marti made a good start in the damp track, but soon the driver in front of him spun around at turn 2 and he had no chance to avoid him. This meant one track rod and the steering arm were bend. Still, he managed to finish the race in P12 just behind returning single-seater driver Michael Heche.
For the second race track conditions were properly wet. Marti’s favorite conditions and even starting from P12 he had high hopes for a great finish. But things went from bad to worse… almost right away his carburetor developed a problem and it was becoming worse and worse. Marti never gave up and managed to finish the race.
In the third and final race Marti once again had to start from the last position. The track was drying fast, but not dry enough for slicks. The team took the correct decision and put Marti with low pressure in his tires. But once again Marti had a stroke of bad luck. This time out he had to run through the gravel on the start while avoid the turn one melee. He got stuck and had to push his kart which cost him a lot of time. From that point on Marti put his head down and started catching up his rivals. Soon he managed to catch the back end of the field and overtook his rival in the battle for second in the championship Matthias Bischofberger. This was very important because it means that despite his bad weekend Marti overall lost just 2 points to Matthias(who also had a bad weekend) in the championship with 60 points on offer at the last round which will be at Wohlen in 24th October.
Overall it was a character building weekend. Whenever he was free of problems, Marti was getting faster and faster. But most importantly despite his young age he kept his composure and never gave up, showing maturity beyond his years.
