Karting greats Past, Present... and Future..?

Round 4 of the WSK Series at Genk in Belgium over the weekend bore witness to one of the greatest kart drives, when the 15-year old future champion of Formula 1, the little Dutch ace Nyck De Vries, dominated the mighty of the 'blue riband' Formula SKF category.

The 1993 British Formula A champion from 1993, Mark Rose, of Mark Rose Motorsport, who now runs Hazz Truelove in Formula KF3, is happy to claim that De Vries is the greatest kart driver he has ever seen... and Mark's driver selections over the last 20 or so years have been rarely wrong.

See with Mrk above is Nyck, together with the two Truelove brothers Matt and Hazz, who finished a fine 8th overall in his own final.

Monaco Kart GP

Superb weather conditions greeted the drivers for the Monaco Cup, covering the KF3 junior drivers, the outstandingly quick KZ2 gearbox aces, and the KF2 TM powered 6-hour endurance teams.

Run over three two-hour events, two of the endurance races were held today (Saturday), where the no,39 team was led by Nelson Piquet Jnr, the (former?) F1 driver who last raced for the Renault F1 team, until the Singapore race fixing scandal rocked motor-sport. Despite a big problem during the last 15 minutes of the 4th hour, Piquet hung onto the lead, but only by 24s from the British outfit Screen 4 Life, with Kartograph, another British team in 3rd place.

The winner of race two though was the impressive British outfit led by Dean Hawkey, who but for an engine problem in race one would have been leading the event overall. They had started race two 9 laps down on grid 15, but by winning race two and more0or-less stering clear of trouble, ended Saturday only 5 laps adrift, after a superb recovery of 4 laps, no mean feat in this company!

Only one KZ2 heat was completed and that went to the ever consistent Intrepid driver and Dutch champion, Bas Lammers, who had said earlier this afternoon how much he "loved this circuit", which incorporates part of the Formula 1 track round by the swimming pool complex and LA Rascasse...

In KF3 Carlos Sainz Jnr was impressive, with the expected pace from Nyck De Vries sadly lacking at the moment. Hopefully the Zanardi mounted team can make some changes overnight to give the Spanish champion hotter competition?