Tiger's 2015 Carnival of Karts
| from Sean Phillips | 26 May 2015 |
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The Tiger Kart club in Perth held its signature event, the Alloysteel International Carnival of Karts, over the weekend of the 23rd & 24th of May. A huge crowd and mostly perfect conditions greeted over 270 entries and with only 12 classes on offer the fields were huge.
Sportsman 100 Pro had a 40 kart field stacked with some of Australia’s best karting talent and what a race they put on. Kip Foster showed once again why he’s considered one of Australia’s most tactical and skilful kart drivers by pulling away in the final for a clear win over Nikola Mitic and Thomas Sparks. The top 5 place getters shared a $2000 prize pool with happy faces all round in the Foster camp as Kips son Scott also picked up 4th place on the day.
Above: Sportsman 100 Pro form up
pic - Sean Phillips
Above: Nikola Mitic would take 2nd in the Sportsman 100 Pro final, here leading Kip Foster
pic - Sean Phillips
Jnr Clubman was another great class to watch and with the kids now running the new KA100 engine the pace was absolutely awesome to watch, these karts are really moving along with lap times just off the 49 second barrier. Sam Dicker held the Flatout Karts banner high with a commanding win in the final. Cory Minton the pocket rocket was in 2nd and Shae Thompson a strong 3rd place.
Above: Junior Clubman winner Sam Dicker
pic - Sean Phillips
Open class made another appearance at the Carnival with a 20 kart field that was spectacular to watch with 20,000RPM engines screaming and rubber flying everywhere around the corners. In typical Open class form everything from twin 125 Rotaxes through to awesome slide carbie rotary valve 100cc Formula Super A karts were on track battling for the glory. It was great to see such a range of hand built high performance karts racing in an era now where much of this skill has been replaced with out of the box racing. Ross Sears was on fire all day winning in his 200 Super with Blake Preston’s twin 125 Rotax kart keeping him honest for 2nd and Arron Grossman come home in 3rd place.
Above: Luke Morton top-tenned the Open class in his Twin
pic - Sean Phillips
Restricted 125 Light was another class where the cream rose to the top with Saverio Ferraro taking the win David Harris in 2nd and Josh King in 3rd. The whole field drove a fast clean race all weekend with some super action right through the 20 kart field.
Jnr National Light had an unbelievable 29 entries and some of WA’s hottest young karting talent to boot. Jesse Thomas, Aaron Love and Jakson Timmer took the top 3 spots in the final but to be honest the field was stacked with talent and some of the dicing through the pack had to be seen to be believed. Great driving from all the kids and many thanks for turning up in such huge numbers.
Jett DeMarte took one of the biggest wins of his career by taking out the Cadet 9 class in fine style. He held his cool with immense pressure from behind during the 15 lap final and is going to be a real talent in future karting. Joshua Byrne and Luca Nici kept him very honest though and all 3 drivers could have taken the win at any stage. Well done to all the Cadet 9 drivers.
Above: James Miccucci-Allen and Kaidyn Manley in Cadet 9
pic - Sean Phillips
Cadet 12 was just as action packed with Craig Spencer, Dylan Ferfolja and Cody Leunen covering the first 3 places, Chase Hoy was 4th after starting a strong 2nd in the final. A red light incident early in the race meant a full race stoppage and it was great to see all the kids correctly managing both the red light stoppage and the full grid re start exactly as per the rule book regulations. A few of our senior drivers could take a leaf from these kids on what to do in a red light stoppage situation, well done kids.
Above: Cadet 12 winner Craig Spencer ahead of Chase Hoy who was 4th in the Final
pic - Sean Phillips
Lewis Shugar did a Lewis Hamilton all weekend in TAG 125 light by starting off the front and dominating all the races. Patrick Martin did close him down mid way through the final though and it looked like we had a race on our hands only for Lewis to slowly edge away again for a close but comfortable win. Michael Goss went home with 3rd place in what was another huge class with over 20 entries.
Above: Lewis Shugar won TaG 125 Light
pic - Sean Phillips
It was great to see Brad Fitch back into karting after a short break and his signature class TAG 125 heavy would have been wishing he was on an extended break after the weekend. Brad took a great win over Raymond Cochrane who was driving out of his skin and looked to be a real threat to Brad all weekend. These 2 guys were the class of the field and opened up over a straight length gap to 3rd in most races where this class is typically very close. The final was a real nail biter with Raymond looking likely to make a move on Fitch at any stage but every time Brad was able to just pull enough of a gap to close off the threat. A great win to Brad and an outstanding drive from Raymond over 3rd placed Ben Spencer.
Above: Ben Spencer (14) was 3rd in TaG 125 Heavy, heaer leading Taylor Thomas
pic - Sean Phillips
P-plater Ryan Burke had a great run in the Restricted 125 Heavy final where he took a convincing win over a high class field. Jay Ten Broeke and John Brennan came home 2nd and 3rd places where the mid field dicing from the Restricted 125 Heavy guys had the crowd on their toes all weekend.
Above: Ryan Burke took out Restricted 125 Heavy
pic - Sean Phillips
Brock McGregor cleaned up the Jnr National Heavy class with a convincing win over Cooper Stewart and Jack May. Again well done to all the Jnr National Heavy drivers for putting on a great display all weekend.
Above: Brock McGregor was victorious in Junior National Heavy
pic - Sean Phillips
KZ-3 was once again the star of the show at the Carnival with 27 karts revving their engines in preparation for the green flag a site to be seen and heard. It’s hard to keep pace with the action even just trying to watch this class on track little lone race in it!!! It was a well deserved win to BD Souter Dawson from Flat Out Karts who just walked away in the final. His consistent speed was just relentless where by ½ race distance it looked like the pack was closing in he just took it up another gear and steamed away to a great win. BD has done a huge amount of work behind the scenes of KZ-3 in WA and is one of the nicest blokes in karting, I’m sure everyone would agree it was a well deserved win. Bayley Mickler driving for FMA motorsport took 2nd place and Amrit Kandola came home 3rd. Hard luck story was Pavan Kandola who took an early lead in the final only for his exhaust to break resulting in a devastating DNF.
Above: BD Soutar-Dawson won the 26-strong KZ-3 class
pic - Sean Phillips
Following the presentations the club drew out the random draw winners for over $15,000 worth of prizes including an IAME X-30 and IAME KA 100 engines (thanks to REMO racing) a Rotax 125 (thanks to Kart Mart and IKD) heaps of tyres, race equipment, I Pad’s and all sports of other cool prizes.
Huge thanks to all our sponsors and once again to Alloysteel International our naming rights supporter again for this year.
Also a massive thank you to everyone behind the scenes who worked tirelessly all weekend (and in some cases for months in preparation) so an event of this size could come off without a hitch.
The Tiger Kart Club can be proud of hosting another awesome Carnival of Karts that has now become one of WA’s signature karting events, well done.
Above: Kip Foster won the Sportsman 100 Pro class
pic - Sean Phillips
