Last Updated on 24 March, 2024 by gokartprix
The second race of the day was our Birthday Race. This time we chose a special format with a short qualification and a long final race. We were expecting rain, but it was sunny instead. Every driver had only 6 laps in Qualification to set the best lap time. Andreas did it in 1 minute and 1,43 seconds. 2nd best was Andreas’s main title rival Fredrik with 1 minute and 1,61 seconds followed by Anatoly with his 61,92 seconds. The rest of the field were slower than 62 seconds per lap.
The first segment of the Final Race started with a big crash. Fredrik overtook Andreas and was leading until the 2nd corner when Andreas missed Fredrik’s breaking point and bumped him hard from the back. Fredrik went out off the track spinning while Andreas himself stopped sideways on the track. Anatoly and Tomas could avoid him, but Berke and Igor S couldn’t. Andreas got 2 hard hits from them. Mattias has chosen to turn into Fredrik instead. The only 2 drivers who totally avoided the crash going inside the turn were Igor K and Kristoffer, and Latvian took the lead. Those few who survived formed a leading group of 4 gokarts with a gap behind them. Anatoly overtook Igor K for the lead, so did Tomas. They were fighting for P1, but Igor K also wanted a piece of the pie and joined this fight. Behind them Mattias and Igor S made successful moves on Berke. Then there was Kristoffer’s time to let them go. Then Igor K couldn’t hold them. So Mattias and Igor S were going through the field like a hot knife cutting the butter. But right behind them the same moves were performed by Andreas. Long story short, in the first segment’s top 3 on the finish line were Mattias, Andreas and Igor S despite the fact that Anatoly was leading the most of it.
The next segment started without any incident, but there were battles on every level. In the front Andreas was attacking Mattias. Right behind them Tomas was pressing on Igor S. A little to the back Fredrik was leaning on Anatoly. Some positions were exchanged. Andreas took the lead. Tomas went up to the 3rd. Then Igor S took the 3rd back, but Tomas got squeezed between Fredrik and Igor K. Fredrik overtook Tomas, Anatoly overtook Igor K… and it was just a half-way of the race distance! Igor S was trying to reach the leaders as they were constantly in a battle, but even fighting both of them were faster than everybody else! Only on the last lap of the segment Mattias managed to gnaw back out the lead and win the segment earning another 3 points into the championship. Tomas moved to P4 for a little bit but then gave it back to Fredrik and also P5 to Anatoly. There were no points given out after P3, but Tomas didn’t want to lose anyway and passed Anatoly again.
The final restart! Mattias still leads. Fredrik went up to P3. Igor S wanted to catch leaders, but Fredrik is on his way now and also Tomas pushing behind. Finally he overtook Fredrik, but this fight attracted some cars behind who got very close and it all could get very messy. But it settled down – Igor S, Fredrik, Anatoly and Tomas. Then the last 2 of these swapped the positions again. Then Anatoly lost another spot to Igor K. But in the front… The battle between Mattias and Andreas requires a separate book of reviewing and analyzing. The legends should be told and passed forward from generations to generations. If we had a live broadcast, the cameras wouldn’t show anyone else but these 2 leaders and their fight. Intense but clean battle during the whole final segment was exactly what our Birthday Race needed! They crossed the finish line with just a 0,12 of a second gap and the victory in our Race of the year was claimed by… Mattias!
He is the new proud owner of our special trophy – the Birthday Race mug. Andreas almost had it, but not this time. Besides, he already has one :). In fact, for that crash on lap 1 Andreas received a yellow card. Now he has 2 of them and he needs to be extra careful for the upcoming 4 races! Because 3 collected yellow cards will reduce championship points! The 3rd finished Igor S and he got his first podium in this season. Fredrik ended the race on P4. The next could be Tomas, but he spun in turn 1 not long before the finish and that ruined his race. He finishing 2nd to last. Another unlucky driver was Kristoffer, who had some technical problems with his gokart. He went into the pits in the first segment but got back to the track losing a lap that never was gained back. That was a disappointment after a strong performance in the previous race earlier that day. Igor K got P5, followed by Anatoly, Berke and Mio.
With earning a lot of points Mattias jumped up to the top row in the season’s leaderboard. Andreas is now 2nd. Fredrik lost 2 spots for just a weekend. In points prediction Andreas has a comfortable lead, Mattias moved to P2 having only 1 point difference with Fredrik. Igor S is gaining on Tomas for P4 with just a 3 points gap.
We want to say a big thank you to the lovely Gokartuthyrningen Motorstadion Sviestad staff for helping us organize our special event, as well as all participants who shared this celebration with us! Next race is just around the corner!
Race documentaion here.