The wait is over. From Thursday 10th to Sunday 13th October on the Portimao circuit, in the Algarve region in southern Portugal, will take place the most important event for the International Shifter categories: the FIA World Championship KZ, KZ2 and KZ2 Masters. The paddock is already packed and the action on the track already began 15 days ago with the Champions of the Future pre-race in which the CRG colors were great protagonists in the KZ category with the victory of Jeremy Iglesias and 4th place by Arthur Carbonnel. This long weekend during which we will know the names of the 2024 World drivers and teams Champions in the KZ classes and which, due to the number of participants and market values, represent an important event not only from a sporting point of view , but also for the commercial implications, could not therefore begin in a better light.
The CRG Racing Team will be competing with three top drivers in the top class, fielding two World Champions such as Jeremy Iglesias and Viktor Gustavsson and the winner of the 2022 World Cup Arthur Carbonnel. The CRG team will also have great ambitions in the KZ2 category, attending the event with a team of 10 drivers including Paavo Tonteri, who has always been among the fastest in practice and in the COFT race 15 days ago, as well as Gabriel Gomez, at his first FIA meeting with a Shifter category. The KZ2 team will be completed by Jokubas Bagdonavicius, Alvar Siimesvaara, Filippo Fiorentino, Pierre Bourgeois, Malo Bolliet, Tigran Bunatyan, Daniel Dallakyan and Jan Luka Worthmann. Also in the KZ2 Masters class, reserved for drivers over 35 years old, the CRG team will line up 4 drivers with great potential: Vincent Cossard, Julien Gueant, Alexandre Vincendet and Timur Timerzyanov.
The event program will respect the usual FIA format with Qualifying Practice scheduled on Friday together with the first Heats, then Saturday entirely dedicated to the Heats and Sunday with the Super Heats taking place in the morning and the Finals which will award the titles in the afternoon.
Like all one-round events, it will be crucial not to make mistakes and manage the qualifying phases as best as possible and any prediction appears difficult, especially given the high value of the drivers and teams racing in each category. The certainty at CRG is the fact of being competitive and being able to play a leading role in all 3 categories.
To follow the event, Live Timing and Live Streaming will be available on the FIA Karting website, while images, videos and comments from the protagonists of each of the 4 days of competition will be shared on CRG’s social media channels.
CRG drivers’ expectations:
Jeremy Iglesias (KZ): “Our performances in the Champions of the Future gave us a lot of energy and motivation. We are sure that we are fast, that we have excellent chassis balance and, more generally, an excellent technical package, which also includes Gianfranco Galiffa’s TM engines. We will have to work in the qualifying phases with maximum concentration and make the best use of the experience gained in the tests and in the race 15 days ago, but we are certainly starting from a base that has proven to work in all track conditions and this makes us approach the race with good optimism”.
Viktor Gustavsson (KZ): “A single-round World Championship is always unpredictable on how it can evolve, but in the KZ class with the single group, we can better monitor, not only our work, but also the one of our opponents, in order to prepare for the Final in the best way possible. The first goal of the weekend will be not to make mistakes in Qualifying Practice, because starting from the front in the Heats will make our work a lot easier, but then the day of truth will in any case be Sunday, when the result that will count will be only one. Several times we have demonstrated that we have a very competitive technical package and a very good race pace in relation to the management of the Dunlop tires that are being used this year; therefore, we begin the most important event of the season with the knowledge that we can play our cards”.
