Review: June 30th race @ Infineon

The Weather was great and the racing even better as the largest turnout took the green flag for Race #3 of the Jim Russell Rotax Saturday Series. In addition to the large driver turnout, SSC Racing attended this race and shared in the largest Rotax entry ever, 47 Rotax drivers. After 6 more memberships turned in, the AMD/Marin Karting region is close to taking over the #4 spot in the size of Rotax regions.

AMD/Marin Karting Rotax Masters and Rotax Masters Light
9 Rotax Masters and 9 Masters Light drivers took the green flag in this the largest Masters field in the history of Northern California Rotax racing. The veteran Rotax Masters drivers (405#) still were the fastest drivers with David Harwin leading the way to the win. Paul Walker entered his first Norcal Rotax race and took second place, but Paul had to work hard all day after a his pole winning time was disallowed to using his ICC fuel instead of the Rotax fuel. Dan Dollosso and David Carlisle were 3rd and 4th overall and in the Masters class. Henri Richard ran his first race of the year and finished a fine 7th overall and 5th in the Masters class.

In the local option class Rotax Masters Light (365#), Jo Montes took the class win with a 5th overall with a 4 second win over Emmanuel Celestino. Mert Solis, Raymond Bustamante Sr and Vivex Diy were 3rd thru 5th in class and 8th thru 10th overall. With nine drivers, this was a go showing for this local option class with the head of the RMax Challenge in attendance to witness the support for this class.

AMD/Marin Karting Senior Rotax
Clayton Snow made it 3 race wins in a row, but it started out like the Reverse Sprint configuration was not going to be to his liking on this Saturday. Clayton qualified a surprising 4th overall, but he had to work hard to get back to 1st place in the Pre-Final. In the Main, Clayton continued to show his 2007 dominance and took a 2 second victory over Wes Phillips. Wes and 3rd place finisher Michael Ostrowski had to get their fine results the hard way, by starting the Prefinal from the last row of the 13 kart field. Michael took a strong 4th in the Prefinal, followed by Phillips, the 2005 Senior Rotax National Champion. Troy Castaneda took the pole in Qualify and a strong 2nd in the Prefinal, but had to settle for 4th in the Main behind the hard charging Phillips and Ostrowski. 5th place went to Gregory Liefooghe.

AMD/Marin Karting Junior Rotax and California Kartworld Junior HPV-2
9 Junior Rotax Drivers and 7 HPV-2 drivers put on quiet a show in the largest turn out for both of these classes to date at the Russell Series. This combined field of junior drivers put on quiet a display of fine driving, with the whole field finishing with less than 20 seconds separating the 1st and 16th driver at the end of the 15 lap Main.

Mikee Mejia took the hat trick by winning pole, the Prefinal and Main to win a hotly contested Junior Rotax race. Neil Alberico chased Mikee all day put had to settle for the second less than a half second behind. Jordan Jadallah had to settle for the third as he could not stay close enough to Mejia and Alberico to contend for the win. 4th thru 8th were separated by just seconds and only 5 seconds back of the winner. Kierstin Gee took 4th just ahead of Raymond Bustamante Jr followed by Jordan Miller, Cameron Pringle and Jake Mottaz. Mottaz had to work his way back into contention when he had to do some on track repairs just prior to the start of the Prefinal and had to start the race from the back of the pack.

AMD/Marin Karting Rotax DD2
The last race of the day turned out to be a boring affair until the last lap of the Main. Kris Shaw took the pole with a 50.328, seven tenths ahead of Gregory Liefooghe and 8 tenths ahead of the Senior Rotax top qualifier. In the Prefinal, Kris took a comfortable win ahead of Liefooghe and in the first 10 laps of the Main, Kris had another comfortable lead. But that is when things started to change. Liefooghe started eating into Shaw’s lead and was less than a second back going into the last lap. With two turns to go, Gregory out broke Shaw into the turn and controlled the inside line. Shaw and Liefooghe touched at the exit a bit and Kris had to take to the dirt and thus settle for the second. Liefooghe takes the win, Shaw second with Glen Poy-Wing 3rd some 20 seconds back. 4th was January Grove and Chris DeBruine was 5th.

[Courtesy Ric Shaw]