Norcal Drivers Perform at Willow Springs Rotax Challenge of the Americas
A 3 weekend/6 race Rotax Challenge of Americas Series kicked off at a stormy Willow Springs Kart Track this past weekend with several Norcal drivers taking home one win and 3 podium finishes.
This 6 race series features 3 double weekends of Rotax racing here in California. The winners of the Junior Rotax, Senior Rotax and Rotax DD2 classes will automatically get an invitation to the Rotax World Finals, so a lot is at stake in this series. Rotax Masters and Mini-Max classes are also part of this series.
Over 100 drivers converged on a cold, rainy and sometimes blue sky at Willow Springs Kart track with 9 drivers from the Norcal area in attendance. Friday practice was a good preview of what was to come on the Saturday and Sunday race day programs. It first started with cold and rainy conditions then finished the day on a dry track. Drivers thus got the opportunity to work on both wet and dry set ups and all this practice paid off as the weekend could never figure out what weather it wanted to provide the racers.
Saturday dawned in blue sky and the dry tires came out. This series is the first one on the West Coast to use the new Mojo D2 tire, and the extra grip was put to use by all the drivers on this cold day. In a light DD2 class, Gregory Liefooghe qualified 2nd and took 2nds in both the Prefinal and Main behind Las Vegas’ Curtis Cooksey to earn a podium finish. In Junior Rotax, the top Norcal driver was Jordan Jadallah who qualified 6th, finished 7th in the PreFinal, but worked his way up to 3rd in the Main to take a well earned podium in the tough 28 kart field. This was Jordan’s first time racing at Willow Springs. Mikee Mejia was 12th in the PreFinal but his pipe knocked off on the start of the Main and he had to retire. Northern Nevada’s Brody Zink drove all night to entire his first Junior Rotax race and had to learn the track, his kart and the new D2 Mojo’s without the benefit of the Friday practice day. Brody finished the Main in 20th dicing the whole race with several of the more experienced SoCal drivers. In Senior Rotax, Wes Phillips, 2005 Senior Rotax National Champ, qualified 7th, took 5th in the Prefinal and was up to 2nd in the Main when he lost his water and had to retire. Jake Mottaz had a good run in his first Senior Rotax class event qualifying 17th, 13th in the Prefinal, but got tangled up in a turn 1 incident on the start and came away in dead last. Nikola Radosavljevich also was entering his first out of region event and looked good in the 31 kart field and qualified 22nd, was 17th in the Prefinal and had a good run in the Main to finish 20th. In Rotax Masters, Reno’s David Harwin was right in the middle of the top group of Masters drivers all weekend long qualifying 4th, 5th in the PreFinal and 5th in the Main. Dave also turned in the fast lap in the Main, which earned him 5 bonus points. Stockton’s Craig Nilsson took his 5 year old Rotax off his garage shelf and came down and put his Stockton track experience to good use by finishing 6th in the Main.
On Sunday, the day started out in the rain for the practice rounds. Qualifying started out in the dry but mid-way through Mini-Max Qualify, the rain came down and it stayed wet for the rest of the day. In DD2, Gregory Liefooghe Qualified 3rd. In the Main, Gregory got into 2nd off the start, but was again chasing the fast Curtis Cooksey. Midway through the 30 lap Main, Gregory was starting to reel in Cooksey when a problem with his steering wheel caused a DNF. In Junior Rotax, Jordan Jadallah qualified a disappointing 9th, but he came back to take a strong 4th in the Prefinal on a rainy track. But in the Main, the track was semi-dry and these conditions did not suit Jordan and he fell back a bit to finish in 10th. Mejia finished the Main in 13th. Zink got by several karts on the first lap of the PreFinal to get up to about 13th place, but the more veteran drivers that were caught up in the first lap crashes stormed back to pass Brody who finished 26th. In the Main, Brody’s luck ran out as his kart lost all spark on the warm up lap. A tough first outing for Brody, but expect him to be much quicker at round two in 4 weeks. The Senior Rotax race produced the only Norcal victory with Wes Phillips showing off his rain mastery in the Prefinal with a convincing win. But in the Main, SoCal’s Nick Johnson put the pressure on Wes near the end of the 30 lap race and almost stole the win away from Phillips. But Wes opened up a 3 kart lead on the last couple of laps to take the win. Jake Mottaz did a great job in the rain and finished 10th in the Prefinal and came back to take a solid 8th place in the Main, a solid performance for Mottaz in this tough Socal dominated field. Nikola also looked like he was going to have a strong performance with an 11th in the Prefinal despite a locked up clutch. In the Main, Nikola was a victim of the infamous turn one wreck and was dead last once he drove away from the crash site but finished a credible 16th. In Rotax Masters, Harwin took 4th in Qualify but in the down pouring rain of the PreFinal, he took 2nd and was on the front row for the Main. On the start, Dave fell back to 3rd as the top 3 drivers pulled away from the field. At the end Dave was still in 3rd earning him a well deserved podium finish. Nilsson started the Main in 5th spot, but he had problems early in the race and eventually had to retire. This was Craig’s first Rotax Max Challenge event having spent most of his time running TaG at the Stockton Club, but he was excited on his performance and was looking forward to the next race. Expect more from Craig when he gets his tired 5 year old engine tuned up.
Races One and Two of the Challenge of Americas Series are now done with the hope that the weather will be better in 4 weeks for Rounds Three and Four.
The next race will be held at the Infineon Kart track on February 22-24. Come out and see some of the best karters Rotax has to offer and expect to see some 20 Norcal racers at this event.
Ric Shaw
Posted on January 30, 2008 2:44 PM [Permalink]
