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| February 17, 2010 |
| Driver News: Devlin DeFrancesco - Florida Winter Tour PBIR Preview |
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 | Now healthy, DeFrancesco was back on podium form over the weekend
(Photo: On Track Promotions - otp.ca) |
Devlin DeFrancesco came back on form over the weekend as he bagged a pair of top-five runs in the Florida Winter Tour. Unloaded at Palm Beach International Raceway for the third and fourth rounds of the Formula Kart Championship, the ten-year-old was on the podium in third on Saturday and came from a long-distance area code to snatch a fifth at the stripe on Sunday.
The runs at Palm Beach broke a line of four consecutive outings in January where DeFrancesco failed to finish, a string that began at the Orlando Rotax weekend and continued through the inaugural weekend of the Championship Karting International Florida Cup. Though disconcerting, those in the DeFrancesco Racing camp remained focussed through the end of the month and began February with more customary high expectations.
“We really attribute those poor outing to illness,” said team manager and driver coach Bobby Wilson. “I think the onset of everything was in Orlando with the cold and rainy weather there, and at Homestead he had just been released from the hospital having had pneumonia and bronchitis. He missed all of practice and was running on low energy all weekend which affected his timing and concentration. Even when he struggled though, we knew he had the drive and speed to be up front and would be back on form in February.”
Such was definitely the case on Saturday at Palm Beach, as after qualifying eighth DeFrancesco was fifth after the first race lap of the prefinal and fought in a tight pack over ten laps to maintain the spot at the checker. He then slotted sixth in the main, and in bettering his lap time for five consecutive laps following the green flag he moved to fifth in leading the second pack of karts. He bettered his personal best again on lap nine, and turned his best of the race on ten when he began closing in on the action at the front. When the lead quartet began to squabble for podium spots, DeFrancesco had just the break he needed to get his nose in the middle. He took fourth early in the lap, and third through the middle sections when another kart ran wide. From there it was a fight for the win out of the final turn with a three-wide finish at the checker! The entire podium crossed in less than a tenth-of-a-second, and DeFrancesco had his first podium of 2010.
Sunday began in identical fashion when DeFrancesco qualified eighth once again, and the competitiveness of the Vortex TaG Cadet class was in full effect. His DeFrancesco Racing teammate Kyle Kirkwood was on pole position, the second row of the grid timed 57.1 seconds, and the next three rows of the field each timed 57.2, six karts in total! Prefinal action then proved vastly different, as DeFrancesco was one of three karts collected in turn one after taking the start. He limped around to a P12 finish, but was well of the pace with a bent chassis. That left work to do in the final, but he proved up to the task
From the wave of the green through the end of lap five DeFrancesco took one position each tour and advanced from his P12 starting position to seventh through five laps. He was then knocked back to tenth, and had to start all over again to replicate the charge. He had two spots back by half, and blitzed the field coming home. Beginning on lap eight, DeFrancesco bettered his Personal Best lap time for six consecutive laps, a 57.360 on lap thirteen taking him to fifth and just missing on the fastest lap in the field outright! Fourth, fifth and sixth crossed three wide at the line separated by just four one-hundredths of a second! DeFrancesco was sandwiched in the middle, and had his second top-five finish of the weekend.
Through four of six starts in Vortex TaG Cadet, DeFrancesco has now been top-five in each outing and his 350 points raise him to fourth in the Championship. His focus now turns to the Florida Winter Tour Rotax Mini-Max Championship this coming weekend and the second round of the Championship Karting International Florida Cup to close the month of February. |
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