Blossom Meeting Stands The Test of Time
| press release | 2 September 2015 |
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The Blossom Sprint kart meeting in Hawke's Bay (NZ) has stood the test of time, local club KartSport Hawke's Bay set to host the 48th annual two-day event at its Chemz Raceway kart track at Roys Hill on the outskirts of Hastings this weekend.
With its traditional first-weekend-in-September date the Blossom meeting heralds a new karting season with a unique two-day format which sees drivers from all over New Zealand race round the 687m track in a clockwise direction on Saturday then anti-clockwise direction on Sunday.
Above: At the 47th Blossom meeting in Hawke's Bay last year, Matthew Umbers leads Brad Still and Ashley Higgins in a 125cc Rotax Max Light heat
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Fast Company/Emilee Wright
The meeting also has its own distinctive race format with each class getting four heats using pre-determined grids with points from all four counted and carried over on Saturday, and four heats on Sunday with three running predetermined grids and the fourth with a starting grid based on points scored up until that point.
Once those class races have been run and won each driver's worst performance over the eight class heats is dropped and class winners and place-getters are finally decided.
All the key sprint championship classes are being catered for this weekend with over 70 competitors entered and the Cadet ROK, Vortex Mini ROK and Rotax Junior and 125cc Rotax Max Light classes the most popular.
The Blossom event is the biggest on the Kartsport Hawke's Bay club's annual calendar and has a storied past, effectively spanning the history of the sport in this country.
The inaugural event was a road race around the streets of Hastings in the late 1960s and over the decades it has been run in many different formats. One was a sprint meeting on the Saturday at the Roys Hill track and then a road race on the Sunday just down the road at the Thunder Park drag strip which has now been turned into a vineyard.
