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| November 24, 2005 News |
| EKN Trackside: Rotax Max Grand Finals - Day 3 |
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 | Rain in Malaysia wreaked havoc on the Sr. class, scuttling the first heat thanks to improper grids
(Photo: Sebastien Blin) |
This year’s Rotax Max Grand Finals finally delved into wheel-to-wheel action yesterday. Thursday was a real mix of rain, dry and very slick. The morning warm-up was run under dry conditions and some qualifying sessions encountered a few drops of moisture. After qualifying, however, it started raining hard.
Since the first round of heats were to be run today, all the teams set about changing the setups on their karts they'd qualified on. As long-time EKN member Andy Seesemann mentioned in his forum post, US Rotax Int’l champion Wes Philips had a lot of help from the CRG mechanics. Unfortunately, they went in the wrong direction so he was planning on making a lot of changes anyway. First up was Junior Heat #1 for Groups A and B. All three Americans were in this race and James Kennedy, MacKenzie Johnson and David Holland finished fourth, seventh and 14th, respectively. The race was won by Kenneth Hildebrand of Estonia, who had checked out to a 10+ second lead over Jonathan Wiehann (South Africa) in second.
Race number two for Junior groups C and D was won by Ben Cooper of the UK over Arnold Nevelling of South Africa. Finishing well was Christophe Boisclair of Canada in fourth with fellow countryman Maxime Pelletier in 20th.
Next up was the first Rotax Senior race for groups A and B. They ran around in the rain for 15 laps and, for all the world, it looked like a race. Unfortunately, after the heat was run, race control realized they got the groups all wrong so the first race was for naught. As a result of this, there are no Rotax Senior results from today (other than qualifying) and they have it all to do tomorrow. Phillips was not in the Senior heat that actually ran, but Stuart Marsell was and he had a rough go of it as the kart just didn't seem to want to run correctly. I spoke with Shane Shipley later in the evening and he said that even though they ended up putting 15 extra laps on a set of rain tyres, he was glad they go a "do over" and was looking forward to the next day. Throughout the paddock, opinions were split, some were happy they got to re-run the race (those that didn't run well) and others, naturally, were upset because they finished well. Needless laps were burned on tires, and we’ll have to see what kind of effect this has on the ultimate outcome.
 | Living the dream...
(Photo: Sebastien Blin) |
After the second group of seniors was pulled from the grid due to the scoring miscue, the RM1s were brought up for their first heat. There will be no A-B-C-D groups for RM1 as they all run together thanks to a smaller field. In the time it took to sort out the situation in Rotax Senior, the rain stopped falling and the track started to dry out a bit. As such, the RM1 drivers took to the course on MoJo slicks and the organizers gave them a few extra warm-up laps to bring them up to temperature. At the drop of the green flag, South African Cristiano Morgado dove into the lead and started to pull away until he made an uncharacteristic bobble on lap three, running a bit wide and letting Esa Pekkanen of Finland and Wesleigh Orr get by for first and second.
While Cristiano was playing catch-up, Orr got around Pekkanen for the lead which he held for a couple more laps until he also made a slight error. Unfortunately for Wesleigh, his error, although small, would prove very costly. In turn 12, he slid wide up onto the curb and contact on the fuel line, which was already a bit loose, pulled it clean off the carb. With fuel pouring out onto his rear tyre, Orr promptly spun off in the next corner. He did get the kart fixed and back on track, but finished the race almost two laps down in 27th place. Up front, this left Pekkanen in the lead but in no time Morgado was back in front and finished out the race to win by five seconds.
Back in the pack, the other Team Americas members were having a pretty rough time of it. It seemed after the race each one of them had some form of battle scar with Jonathan Beason and Justin Melton taking the worst of it. The results for ‘our guys’ showed Marco Di Leo in 11th, Nathan Mauel in 15th, Justin Melton in 19th, and, in 26th after getting taken out in the middle of the course, Jonathan Beason. The Oklahoma driver got rammed by another kart and had to get out of his ride to untangle the two. Once he got going again, he made it another four corners before having to stop and make more repairs to his kart. At this point, he slipped and fell on the track while another kart was coming. This caused the normally calm and cool race announcer Ken Walker to shout an explicative over the PA that got everyone's attention.
pits and helping a great deal with set-up advice.
 | Although wet, it's a very slick facility in Malaysia
(Photo: Sebastien Blin) |
After the race, both Di Leo and Mauel were disqualified. I'm not sure what happened with Marco but Nathan was .65 kilo light at the scales. This leaves both with no result for the day but at least they're still in the event.
For those wondering why we take the time to report on a couple of the South African drivers, there's a couple reasons for that. First off, Cristiano Morgado and Wesleigh Orr are the two defending World Champions and deserve such respect. And beyond that, we've developed quite a friendship with their team over the last four years and, as a bonus, Wesleigh's father has been coming over to the US
Last to run was Junior groups A and C, beginning the second round of the heats. I do not have final results at this time, but I do know that James Kennedy took an excellent third place behind two Malaysian drivers (the grandstands were going crazy). James spent most of the race in fourth, biding his time and when the second place driver made an over-optimistic move to take the lead, James was able to capitalize and grab another spot. Christopher Boisclair and Mackenzie Johnson ran ninth and 10th after an excellent battle in a pack of eight karts. Johnson was at the end of the pack of eight and made strong progress, picking of one kart at a time to get up to his final position.
Due to the impending darkness, the next Junior heat that was supposed to run was held over until Friday so we'll have a report on that tomorrow (late Friday or Saturday morning). As always, check back with EKN for further updates and look in on the Rotax Max forum for short reports throughout the day from Andy Seesemann and myself.
Ken Johnson
EKN Correspondent
More tomorrow....
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