Last Updated on 24 March, 2024 by gokartprix
Västerås welcomed us with warm and sunny weather. 14 racers participated in our Midsummer Race and we were glad to meet a lady among them. In Qualification Andreas was the fastest and got TQ despite being in group 1. Mattias, Ernestas and Fredrik were in top 3 in group 2. Audrius ended up 8th showing better lap time than Slawomir.
The only switch of positions in Semi-Final group 1 was between Igor and Fredrik for the 2nd, where Igor went inside in turn 4 after the slipstream although Fredrik was about to attack Mattias on the first laps. It was a tough heat for Kamille who spun several times. But she almost helped Fredrik get his position over Igor back. But somehow after driving 3-wide before the last corner everybody remained in their spots. Petras was settling his score with Audrius, but still finished behind him. Mattias crossed the line first and got himself a first-row start in Final A.
There was a jump start in group 2 – Ernestas pulled out from his 2nd grid position before the green light and despite slowing down he still got himself a 20-seconds penalty. Tomas didn’t want to wait until the end of the heat and overtook Ernestas already on the first lap. Slawomir made a successful attack on Berke, although the Turkish driver didn’t agree with the fairness of that move. Nothing really happened after that. Everybody kept their positions and Andreas won the heat. After the penalty Ernestas moved to P6 and ended up in Final B.
In Final B Ernestas, using all his skills and speed, decided not to wait for long and started overtaking his opponents one by one. First he got Petras who already lost a position to a championship rookie Gedrius. Then Gedrius himself. The last target was Audrius, who was defending for some time but fell at last. Gedrius lost some more positions running off-track a bit. He then tried to gain those back, but overpushed with Petras sending him into the spin and for that got himself a 2-positions penalty. Finally, Ernestas won this heat and got promoted to Final A.
Right on the start of Final A Tomas took P2 from Mattias and Fredrik was able to pass Igor for the fourth. Slawomir also passed Igor who lost his momentum and saw how Ernestas and Berke dragging each other NASCAR style along him. Ernestas, however, was driving on cold tires and couldn’t keep up with the others so he had to let both Berke and Igor through. Meanwhile Fredrik was desperate to get Mattias for a podium spot. But Mattias was defending well and didn’t give any chance to Fredrik. As a leader Andreas had to look back constantly as he was surprised to see Tomas attacking him here and there. But the champion managed to keep Lithuanian behind and won his 3rd race of the season and 2nd race at Hälla Ring breaking track’s 6-year chain of new winners. Tomas finished 2nd, repeating his best result this season and Mattias took P3 together with 2 additional points for the best lap time of the race.
After this race there was no changes in top 10 of the season’s standings and Fredrik is still leading the season. But since we now passed the half-season mark and since we will only count 10 best races by the end of the season, we added another column in the table that shows participants’ gained points to date minus the worst 3 races’ results (including the missed races). This will let you look at the standings from a bit other angle 😊.
By the time we post this there’s only 2 weeks left until our summer break is over and we are back on track with our Birthday weekend! More about it you will find here and here.
Race documentation here.
Big thanks to Hälla Gokart staff for support and to all our participants! You make this championship happen!