Preview: Queensland Enduro Championships
Tweetpress release
Saturday March 10 will bring almost 20 of the best endurance karting teams in Australia together to contest Round 1 of the 2012 Queensland ProKart Endurance Karting Championship at Willowbank Raceway, near Ipswich, Queensland.
The Track Safety International ProKart Endurance Championships are considered among the toughest and most fiercely contested karting series in Australia, with the 2012 series proving to be no exception.
Of the teams contesting this event, the favourite will surely be last year’s series champions Phantom Racing (below). They dominated the final event of 2011 and have already this year finished on the podium in the opening round of the ProKart Australian Championship series at Sydney’s Eastern Creek Raceway in February.
Above: Simon Ham and Steve Thompson, Phantom Racing
To win, they will need to overcome some determined opponents including MF-Tech in their newly acquired KnK Dominator chassis; PDS 661; RPM24; 2Dadz Racing; Nexus Force KnK, Frog Racing, Atlas Engineering and the KnK Tigers.
A number of other teams are expected to feature in what is becoming an exceptionally competitive series. At the opening round of the National Series, the top 4 qualifiers were separated by only 0.036 of a second and the top 11 qualifiers within a second. This degree of competitiveness is found throughout all 3 ProKart series (Queensland, New South Wales and Australian Championships) and consequently a number of teams have been undertaking concerted pre-season testing to maximise their speed and skill prior to the series’ opening round.
With 7-hours of non-stop racing, strategy can often change the race and with variables including driver changes, refueling and safety cars, it is likely teams will be faced with a variety of conditions and weather to further complicate the challenge of winning what will undoubtedly be a fiercely contested and arduous event.
With the race a little over a week away, teams are current undertaking their final checks to ensure that their machinery is meticulously prepared to ensure reliability and speed throughout the event.
This event will feature a replica of the current F1 qualifying system where competitors will contest grid positions across 3 sessions; the number of competitors reduced each session based on their performance in that session; so that only the fastest competitors will contest the final session and the chase for pole position.
Qualifying commences at 12:45pm and the 7-hour endurance race commences at 2pm.
