Wins for Zimin, Johansson and Seppänen in the Viking Trophy

A Swede, a Russian and a Finn shared the wins in the 2008 CIK-FIA Viking Trophy held at Lappeenranta in Finland, not far from the Russian border.

Third in qualifying practice, the Russian Maxim Zimin (Maranello-XTR) went on to dominate all the other phases of the event in KF3, the Junior category, successively winning both his qualifying heats on a dry track on the Saturday, then the pre-final and final on a soaked track on the Sunday. He finished comfortably ahead of the Swede Mans Grenshagen (Tony Kart-TM), the Finns Jari Huttunen (Sodi-TM), Teemu Petjoi (Sodi-TM) and Ville Mäntylä (Maranello-XTR), as well as the Norwegian feminine driver Ayla Agren (FA Kart-TM). This is the second Russian win in the history of the Viking Trophy after the one Aleshin conquered in 2002 at Göteborg (S).

In KF2, there were different leaders at every stage of the event: it was a lady, the Finn Laura Koivuluoma (Tony Kart-Vortex), who initially distinguished herself by achieving the fastest lap time in qualifying practice. At the end of the qualifying heats, it was the Russian Christian Friedrich (Tony Kart-Parilla) who led the provisional classification, ahead of Finland’s Leopold Ringbom (Gillard-Parilla) and Denmark’s Mikkel Mac Jensen (Tony Kart-Vortex). In the Sunday rain, Leopold Ringbom won the pre-final. He then covered the first five laps of the final in the lead but was unable to stand up to Sweden’s Joel Johansson (Energy-TM), who prevailed after the 30-km long race, with a lead of more than 5 seconds over Ringbom and of more than 10 seconds over Jarno Hamppi (Sodi-Parilla).

In KZ2, the Finn Pekka Seppänen (Energy-TM) was the only one who obtained a win for the organising country. As much at ease on a dry and on a wet track, Seppänen won all his qualifying heats, the pre-final and the final. He was accompanied on the final podium by the Norwegian Kenneth Ostvold (Energy-TM) and by the Finnish-Russian Gleb Shirshov (Sodi-TM).

All the results and some selected photographs are available on the CIK-FIA’s website, www.cikfia.com

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