Spotlight on Spain !

If there is a European country where Karting has recently enjoyed a spectacular development it is really Spain. And a certain Fernando Alonso has quite a lot to do with this phenomenon. In addition to the increased number of its licence-holders and to the improved quality of its national championship, the country has seen the creation of several new quality circuits, not to mention the ones still in the pipeline!

The brand new “Motorland” complex of Alcaniz was already visited in 2008 by a CIK-FIA Championship. The Zuera track is another recent ultramodern creation. Close to Saragossa, Zuera will hold on 9-12 July a CIK-FIA European Championship for the Super KF and KF3 categories. And in just over one year the same Zuera track is to have the distinguished honour of hosting the CIK-FIA Karting World Championship!

In Spain, the top category of international Karting, Super KF, will have the second of the three events of its European programme. At this stage of the competition, the debate obviously remains completely open, more especially as no one managed to stand out in the April opening round held in Italy. The six places available on the podiums in the added results of Races 1 and 2 were shared by as many Drivers, Jason Parrott and Simo Puhakka landing a win each, Yannick de Brabander and Miika Kunranta both finishing second, and Robert Foster-Jones and Zdenek Groman both finishing third.

Although Super KF is the Formula One of Karting, the local public will only have eyes for KF3, the category of 13 to 15 years old Juniors. There is really a good chance of seeing a local competitor prevailing, and the field will include the son of a Driver to whom the Hispanic nation owes two FIA World Champion titles, namely the rallyman Carlos Sainz.

A total of 80 Juniors will be at the start after having been selected on the basis of their results in the regional Qualifications organised in May. The Qualification reserved for Western European Drivers which took place in France actually resulted in a certain Carlos Sainz Jr outrageously dominating the race, to the extent that he achieved nothing but first places from practice to the finals! His young fellow countrymen were not forgotten either as they helped themselves to the top seven positions in qualifying practice. The toughest competitors against this Spanish flood were the Britons Jake Dennis and Jordan King, as well as the Frenchman Mathieu Jaminet. Judging by the results of the other two regional Qualifications (Northern and Central), the Dutchman Nick de Vries, the Finn Mikko Pakari, the Swede Gustav Koch, the Czech Martin Doubek, the German Marvin Kirchhofer, the Italian Riccardo Agostini and Russia’s Danil Kvyat and Stepan Karasev, with the addition of Denmark’s Andreas Sebastian Hansen, recent winner of the Viking Trophy, should also be among the main pretenders to the Juniors’ European crown.

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