After 3 days of testing that took place on the Valencia circuit last week, from today onward, the drivers of the direct drive OK and OK Junior categories, will be busy on the same Spanish track with the 1st round of the Champions of The Future, the karting series organized by RGMMC as training in view of the FIA Karting Championships. In fact, the first round of the FIA European Championship for the OK and OK Junior categories will take place in Spain on March 24th, so this week’s race will be a general test to work on setups and, above all, understand and get to know the Maxxis tires better, which will be used in FIA events and which represent an absolute novelty for drivers and technicians.
While on the one hand the objective will be to work towards the European Championship, at the same time all teams and drivers will get to the track with the ambition of achieving a good result and there will certainly be no lack of spectacle on the Spanish circuit. The CRG Racing Team will be attending the event with 18 drivers: 6 in the OK Junior category and 12 in OK one. In the Junior category Oliver Rasmussen, Marco Garst, François Kerdal, Manu Miguez, Asher Ochetsein and Vanesa Silkunaite will defend the CRG colours, while among the Senior ones there will be Gabriel Gomez, Davide Bottaro, Santino Panetta, Michael Ider, Guillaume Bouzar, Markas Silkunas, Jacob Micaleff, Jakub Rajski, Mark Dubnitski, Louis Iglesias, Tom Dussol and Hugo Martiniello.
The CRG drivers in the Junior category will be competing with TM engines managed by Machac Motors, while the OK drivers will use Iame engines from BM Motorsport.
Today the first Free Practice will take place, while tomorrow it will already be time for Qualifying Practice and the first Eliminatory Heats, which will then continue throughout the day on Friday. The Super Heats and the Finals will take place on Saturday, which will be the final day of the event.
To follow the action on the track in real time, you can connect to the official event website (www.championskarting.com) where the Live Timing is available and Live Streaming will be as well, starting from Friday’s races.
CRG drivers’ expectations:
Oliver Rasmussen (OK Junior): “In the tests carried out here last week we found an excellent balance with the new Maxxis tires and therefore we start this race with a good base setup. Obviously we still have a work program to complete, but we also want to fight for a good result and we believe we have the potential to do that. It’s still too early to give feedback on the tires, we will certainly have clearer ideas after the first Qualifying Heats”.
Davide Bottaro (OK): “This race has more value based on the European Championship at the end of the month than for what concerns the result it can bring us, but fortunately the unknown we had with the new tires did not cause us to make major changes to the basic setup and the feedback from the tests was positive, so I think we will be able to do our tests, but also to look for performance and comparisons with all our direct opponents. After the podium in Franciacorta, I would like to confirm myself among the top ten and keep this approach for every race this season. From today on, we will have the opportunity to better evaluate the degradation and performance of the tires in the race, but the fact of having a large group of drivers in the team will make our work faster and more effective”.
