The second round of the Czech Kart Open took place last weekend in the western corner of the country, in Kartarena Cheb. Similarly to Mýto, this time the course of the race was greatly influenced by the weather, which was changing rapidly and brought many difficulties for the drivers and especially the mechanics. They often quickly changed chassis and tyre settings just before the race. The conditions were challenging, but nevertheless the weekend was successful and our drivers won 4 times podium.
The youngest member of the team, Anička Radvanová, held on bravely in the School 50 category and gained more valuable experience.
In Mini 60 our colours were strengthened this time by a very valuable competitor Zdeněk Bábíček, who dominated the weekend. He won the qualifying and all the heats, unfortunately go got 10 second penalty in superfinal and he ended up P2. Jonáš Hubáček, our second Mini driver, made a big improvement and was very fast this weekend. However, a collision slowed him down from moving forward smoothly, but he still made it to a nice P6 in superfinal.
Four of our drivers competed in ROK, three of them in the subcategory ROK Junior, namely Matyáš Kučera, Lukáš Babáček and this weekend the most successful bronze Marek Ambrož. Lukáš and Matyáš did not make it to the superfinals due to collisions. Like Marek, our fourth and most experienced competitor in ROK GP Tomáš Filipenský also made it to the podium on P3. After a crash shortly after the start of heat 1, it seemed that his chances of a good finish were lost but the opposite was true. Fortunately Tom escaped without injury and the mechanics managed to repair his kart in time for the next heat. Tom qualified to superfinal where he put in an incredible performance on wet track, working his way up from P17 at the start to P3 at the finish.
Two gentlemen of our team Josef Barilla and Pavel Sovička fought in KZ2 Gentleman class. Both pilots held on bravely and there were many overtaking manoeuvres during the race. Their results were P8 and P10 in superfinal. We are aiming for even better results in the future, which is surely only a matter of time given the efforts and progress of both drivers.
Tadeáš Radvan made a huge progress in OK, pushing hard the top 3 drivers all weekend and showing his back to many more experienced competitors. Finishing P4 he was were close to his first career podium, but what wasn’t now may happen next time.
In KZ2 we had a strong representation of 4 drivers this time. The team leader, Jakub Kadlčák, was the most successful of them and after tough battles he twice on P2 and once P3. David Gorčica, still 14 years old on the day of the race, showed an excellent performance in his debut in the Czech championship and took a great P6 in the superfinal. He was followed by Filip Vloch on P11, who bravely held his own among the Czech karting elite throughout the weekend and just missed a top ten finish in the superfinal. The team’s newcomer Troy Sovička also showed decent progress, improving and pushing his limits race by race.
We would like to thank the drivers, mechanics and Macháč Motors for the engines for their professional cooperation. We are looking forward to seeing you at the beginning of June in Písek.
PHOTO: Ondřej Kovalčík
