Race ROUNDUP: KARTING CHALLENGE RD 4

an ugly battlefield in lo206 senior

An overall rough weekend for many in the Briggs & Stratton Senior class made it hard to gauge raw pace amongst the field. Overaggressive driving from a few severely hurt the overall race sessions, red flagging the Final and causing an early ending to the main event after not 1, but 2 flips. Juan Arenas emerged from the smoke victorious, joined by a pair of first-time podium finishers with Juan Baldrich finishing second and Bobby Ross coming in third.

alejandro ramirez makes the outside stick in lo206 junior

While the raceday saw multiple final lap passes deciding victory, Alejandro Ramirez's move will remain as one of the best thus far this season in his duel against SoFloKC's Ashton Chilton. The SLA Kart Racing driver worked together with Chilton nearly the entire Final to set up for a head-to-head fight for the top spot in the closing laps.

Chilton did everything he could to keep Ramirez behind, and was successful up until they arrived at the final hairpin on the racetrack, Turn 9. Chilton covered the inside line and braked earlier than usual to ensure he wouldn't slip off the groove. In a split-second decision, Ramirez pulled up to the outside of Chilton entering the corner and "rim-rode" the long way around to keep his momentum higher than Chilton's, allowing him to power by the Florida Keys resident before they got to Turn 10.

Chilton made one final dive for the win entering the final corner, but he could not complete the move and to avoid contact he kicked the rear-end around and spun out. He would come back to finish inside third but surrendered the second position to Vance Devine in the process.

surreal racing in tag senior

It is rare in karting that one driver is just head-and-shoulders above the field in pace that he/she is able to pull a gap and dominate a race. With that said, we often overlook some fantastic races due to the very fact that karting's nature makes them the norm. This weekend, though, the TaG Senior drivers put on a heck of a show from start-to-finish that featured everything the sport should be about: clean, hard racing.

Jason Angles struck first in qualifying, putting his Kosmic on the pole by over half a second. Unfortunately, a DQ in post-session scaling sent him to the tail end of the grid, surrendering the top spot to Manuel Troncoso. In the Pre Final, Angles wasted zero time cutting his way back to the front, making up lost time to both Troncoso and Pulice. While he didn't get all the way to the front, his drive forward set up what was an absolutely thrilling main event.

Manuel Troncoso would lead the field to the green, but almost instantly was under heavy fire from Orsolon Racing's Jordan Pulice. Angles quickly joined into the fight, which lasted nearly the entire first half of the Final before a chain failure sidelined Pulice and separated Angles from Troncoso. On the Final lap, Angles found himself positioned in the lead, before slipping on some rocks in the braking zone entering the first turn. Troncoso found his way around him and drove a flawless lap to hold on for his second victory of the season.

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