Hossack Wins Opening Round of Superkart Championship

press release

With two wins and two seconds, Darren Hossack has raced into the lead of the Australian Superkart Championship after the opening round of the series held at Eastern Creek International Raceway on Round 5 of the Shannons Nationals Motor Racing Championships on the weekend.

The new Australian Sports Sedan series points leader had to work hard racing two cars over the weekend. Some fierce dicing with the top Superkart racers in Australia saw the Safe Evolutions Anderson-Safe, with its self-developed engine take a handy points lead into the series second round later this year at Mallala.

Race 2 saw Hossack jump clear from a confused start where the red lights flashed off and on to skip away from the pack to win from Sam Zavaglia and Carlo Chermaz. Hossack had earlier won Race 1 after a huge battle with Zavaglia (Stockman Superkarts Stockman-Yamaha) and Gary Pegoraro third. Race 3 saw Hossack give best to first Zavaglia then reigning champion Warren McIlveen (Mac's Marine Stockman-Honda) only to see Zavaglia given a drive-through for jumping the start with Chermaz followin Hossack home for third. By the final race his only points rival for the round was Chermaz (Buildersmile PVP) whose consistency deserted him with a tyre failure on the last lap of the weekend..

Zavaglia won the final race of the day to wrap up second place in the points, with Gary Pegoraro (RMR Superkarts Marron Excavations Anderson-FPE) overcoming a weekend full of minor mechanical gremlins to hit the sweet spot in the last race, collecting third for the race and the round, three points clear of Chermaz, seven points ahead of reigning champ McIlveen who had struggled through most of the weekend with a seized motor in qualifying, than spearing into a sand trap in Race 1.

Anton Stevens (Electrosil Art Motorsport PVP) was fast for most of the weekend to finish sixth for the round, but a series of slow starts handicapped the New Zealander's points haul. Yiani Harpas (Internode Metaplanners Davtec Zip Eagle-BRC) overcome a broken chain early in the day to claw back to seventh for the round, while Matthew Wall, one of Australias fastest sprintkarters, substituting for Jason McIntyre aboard the RMR Superkarts Wizzer Race Engines Anderson-FPE was cruelled out of a top result after coasting to a halt in the bonus point final race with a dead kart.

In the 125 cc class Brad Stebbing (Suburban Accounting Stockman-Honda) dominated the meeting after pole sitter Russell Jamieson (Coach Design Stockman-Honda) struggled in the races with repeated engine problems. A close fight for second for the round saw Tony Lappas (Romeos Foodland IGA Supermarket Stockman-Honda) claim the position on a count back from Jarrod Lethborg (www.trimfix.co.nz Bakker-Honda) with Jason Smith just behind on debut with the self developed Fuji Xerox Cougar-Honda.

In a near perfect day for the Safe Evolutions team, Martin Latta (MJR Bricklaying, Safe Evolutions Anderson-Yamaha) won the 250 National class virtually unopposed after class favourite Rick Setterfield (RMR Superkarts Anderson-KTM) had his engine fail in qualifying that patched repairs could not fix.

The series next travels to Mallala Motor Sport Park near Adelaide over the weekend of November 1 and 2, but in the mean time next month will feature the non-gearbox Superkart Nationals at Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit in Victoria.

Quotes:

1st 250 International: Darren Hossack (Safe Evolutions Anderson-Safe): "It's been one of those dream weekends you don't have very often. It's as good as we could have hoped for, Scott Ellis has put in a massive amount of work on the kart and it shows from where we were here at the V8 Supercar round. Obviously Sam and Warren are going to be very hard to beat in their backyard. We've done better than I could have expected. Mallala will be more of an even playing field for everyone, I think to get this one out of the way and be leading the championship, we couldn't have done much more."

2nd 250 International: Sam Zavaglia (Stockman Superkarts Stockman-Yamaha): "I'm happy. It's a new kart, a new engine. A completely different setup to the Honda, so we're finally getting the Yamaha right. Darren won the day it was well deserved, they've come a long way with that Safe engine in a short amount of time. Brian Stockman been doing this for a long time for them to do this in two years it's a credit to them."

3rd 250 International: Gary Pegoraro (RMR Superkarts, Marron Excavations Anderson-FPE): "I've got to thank my team and my main mechanic Rick Williams he put in the effort all weekend and we certainly made it turn around from a pretty up and down start to the weekend. We can't complain, we'll see how we go in the next round in South Australia."

1st 125 Gearbox: Brad Stebbing (Suburban Accounting Stockman-Honda): "We had a great day, the kart didn't miss a beat. Russell Jamieson has had trouble all weekend and Tony Lappas has had trouble too. We had a bit of an off in the last race but crawled back up, enough th get second. All in all a pretty good weekend."

2nd 125 Gearbox: Tony Lappas (Romeos Foodland IGA Supermarket Stockman-Honda): "We had a bad run all day, to finish with a race win and second for the round is really good. Hopefully we'll do better in the next round."

3rd 125 Gearbox: Jarrod Lethborg (www.trimfix.co.nz Bakker-Honda): "Heaps better than what I expected, We came here not expecting to be anywhere near that. There are guys out there much faster than me, just good to finish and get the points."

1st 250 National: Martin Latta (MJR Bricklaying, Safe Evolutions Anderson-Yamaha): "It started off pretty bad on Friday with the seized engine but after that everything worked like clockwork. The kart felt good all weekend thanks to Rockett Race Engines. Safe Evolutions and ART Motorsport."

Provisional Points after Round 1

250 Inter: Hossack 79, Zavaglia 60, Pegoraro 54, Chermaz 51, McIlveen 47, Stevens 39, Y.Harpas 33, Wall 32, Stephen Castles 29, Daniel Ramerman 19 etc

125 Gearbox: Stebbing 82, Lethborg and Lappas 59, Smith 50, John Bakker 47, Tim Philp 46, Steve Young 44 etc

250 Nationals: Latta 85, David Yuill 56, Frank Giglio 52

 

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