Collie Grand Prix of Karting
| Are you wondering why this event gained coverage on KartSportNews, but the race meeting you attended did not? Simple Answer; We received a report, results and some photos from a valued contributor soon after the meeting. If you want your race meets published on KartSportNews, get your club's Publicity Officer to contact us. We want to publish more race reports in 2012, but that can only happen if we find more contributors. Read how HERE. |
by Megan Norman
It was a beautiful country day for the Inaugural Collie Grand Prix of Karting. This meeting was being held at the Kostecki Motorplex located in Collie, 2.5 hours out of Perth, WA.
The motorplex has a 1600m long circuit used for a variety of events for cars, motorcycles and karts. This meeting was the first AKA event held at this venue and the first long circuit race in nearly 10 years.
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John Summerfield
With classes offered from Midgets to Open Performance, all age groups were here to enjoy the day. Heats were controlled by time rather than laps giving a new change to the format. With the ability to house more classes on the track at once, this gave drivers a 30min gap between their heats leaving no time to lose your focus. Even though the pressure was on, there was nothing but praise for the time format.
Our young drivers Alex Hannant, Brooke Redden & Black Preston enjoyed the experience of being on a long circuit. Track time was more about individual results, seeing each other on the track gave the extra boost to chase the driver down in front.
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John Summerfield
Senior National & Sportsman classes were new to the track as the club was more experienced with 125cc & open class engine’s being geared for the conditions. Going with a 13t on the engine & 80t on the axle, the engines performed well with one driver reporting a 3sec drop by slip streaming the karts.
Sportsman Light was taken out by Steven Summerfield with Steve Bell taking 2nd place. Sportsman Heavy field was Andrew Moylan 1st, Chris Griffiths 2nd, Paul Hughes 3rd & Randle Beavis 4th. Senior National was taken out by Russell Bell 1st & Thomas Gray 2nd. Well done to Tom for finishing the day jumping from Sportsman 125 Light class to Senior National class straight after each other.
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John Summerfield
Sportsman Restricted classes were filled with new up and coming drivers. Cody McLachlan ended his season with 1st in Restricted Light, another notch for his belt in his winning chassis & engine combination. For their first race meeting, friends Martin Sheaf 2nd & Kirk Boud 3rd were only 5 points separating their positions. Brothers Peter Newland 1st and Paul Newland 2nd took out the first two positions for Restricted Heavy and Phil Lalor gained 3rd place.
Open Performance was the largest class for the day. The class was mainly filled with 125cc shifter engines except for the X30 twin of Garrie Walker & Leopard twin of Wayne Bell. Unfortunately Garrie sprung a water leak and returned to a single engine.
Brett Burvill took out 1st place with Steven Scoble 2nd & Rick Howe 3rd. Sportsman 125 Light followed Opens on the track with Mitch Bell 1st, Gary Dunlop 2nd & Thomas Gray 3rd.
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John Summerfield
Not to be outdone, the WA superkarts ran under test and tune conditions. Grant Heard – 250cc International, Paul Jones – 250cc National & Marcel Moreno – 250cc National. With their full bodywork and engine noise, they are a force to be reckoned with.
SuperkartclubWA would like to thank all the officials, drivers & pit crew for joining our inaugural meeting. With people coming north from Newman, east from Kalgoorlie & south from Albany, we hope the word is spread of what a great day we all had.
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John Summerfield
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John Summerfield
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John Summerfield
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John Summerfield
