Last Updated on 24 March, 2024 by gokartprix
Traditionally our season finale takes place in O’Learys Kista indoor track with electric gokarts. This year we went fully into speed 4 – both Qualification sessions and Final. Mattias was the fastest in Q1, followed by Kristoffer and Berke. After Q2 the leaderboard was shuffled due to participants’ different performance in other gokarts. So, Q2 was dominated by Kristoffer. 2nd fastest was championship rookie Mikael. Mattias was 3rd, but thanks to his super lap in Q1 that time held as the best one and Mattias took his first TQ of the season. By the way, only 3 drivers out of 8 couldn’t improve their lap times in Q2, including Mattias. Behind him on the starting grid of the Final qualified Kristoffer and Mikael. Fredrik found himself on P5 and he just needed to start the session in order to reserve a runner-up title.
Mattias started well from pole position, but was overtaken by Kristoffer already in turn 2. Slawek started better from P4 than Mikael from P3, but the outside line of turn 1 didn’t help him. Not only was he forced to give back P3 to Mikael but he also let Fredrik pass him with a better pace. His troubles didn’t stop there – before the last hairpin he wanted to have a better line going wide, but Martin used it to dive into the corner. Unfortunately Berke behind both of them also wanted to make some positions and optimistically went inside. 3-wide into the hairpin didn’t promise a good outcome. Slawomir was pushed and turned by Martin who was bumped by Berke. As a result Slawek is dead last and Berke got a yellow card.
The first lap for Martin was really successful – he started on P8, but right away managed to react on the green light faster than Igor and took his place, then was Berke, then this 3-way incident. Some laps later he was already overtaking Mattias… What? Yes, Mattias couldn’t tame the gokart and was all over the place losing his pace and speed. Mikael caught Mattias in the first hairpin and took 2nd. By that time Kristoffer already had a solid lead. After ⅓ of the race Fredrik passed struggling Mattias. Berke was feeling nervous after the incident and spun in the same corner letting Igor pass him by. By the end of the race there was no more gap between Kristoffer and Mikael. Neither of them has ever won a GoKart PRIX race before. On the last lap Mikael made the same move on the leader as he did with Mattias and it worked again! So the leader changed on the last lap and Mikael crossed the finish line first in his inaugural GoKart PRIX start! Congratulations! Kristoffer was the closest ever to his triumph. But not yet. 🙂
Fredrik finished on the podium again and became the most points scorer in the season ever! Martin had a good run and he was happy for himself. There were 2 unhappy racers though – Berke and Slawomir who finished in the last 2 positions. For the last year’s winner it was one of the unluckiest races in his career. But he still managed to overtake Anatoly for P9 in season standings. And Berke, who by the way also was on the podium here in 2021, made a few mistakes and just lost the hopes for a good result.
After the race we were celebrating the ending of the season with a prize giving ceremony. Andreas got his 4th champion trophy. Fredrik got his first GoKart PRIX trophy and Mattias got the smallest, but still a valuable trophy. 🙂
With this our 2022 GoKart PRIX season is officially over. It was the longest season yet with 13 stages. We would like to thank all 38 participants from 6 countries and especially the ones who were trying to race with us more often. We also thank the staff of all 14 tracks we raced on this year (including Challenge CUP)! Stay tuned! Next season is going to be EPIC! 🙂
Race documentation is here