A bumper entry from karters from all over the South Island (as well as some from the North) for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend’s two-day/two-track Sunbelts Sprint Championships meeting at Blenheim and Nelson bodes well for this year’s Properly Plastered Mainland Series.
This year’s series will be fought out over three two-day meetings, the first this weekend at the 33rd Sunbelts event, the second the KartSport Dunedin and Southland clubs’ annual Southern Series in August and the third and final at Christchurch club KartSport Canterbury’s Garden City Championships meeting at the end of September.
Multi-round series like the Goldstar and Top Half ones in the North Island and now the Mainland one in the South are perfect stepping stones between club and Island and National level events and the convenor of this year’s Mainland Series, Dee Workman from Nelson says it is ‘pretty cool’ to see such strong support, both for the two Sunbelts meetings this weekend, and the Mainland Series.
“This year we’ve had 94 entries for the Sunbelts, which is the biggest we have had since 2007 when they got 98.”
All up those 94 entries are spread over nine different classes with fairly even representation across the Senior and Junior ranks.
The best supported class is Junior Rotax with 14 entries, amongst them those of 2017 South Island class champion William Exton from Picton, and 2017 South Island and 2017 and 2018 New Zealand Vortex Mini ROK title holder Jacob Douglas from Christchurch who has only just made the move up to the Rotax Junior class.
Another youngster who has just made a move up to the next age group class is Louis Sharp from Christchurch. Sharp dominated the Cadet ROK class in 2017, winning both the New Zealand and South Island, as well as the NZ Schools’ title, and now he has set his sights on doing the same in Vortex Mini ROK.
The Rotax Heavy class is the best-supported senior one with 13 entries including those of a strong Nelson contingent led by Kevin Barker as well as that of top Dunedin driver Arron Black.
Meanwhile, Chris Cox from Rangiora will be his usual busy self this weekend, the multi-time South Island champion again contesting two classes, Rotax Light where – amongst others – he will come up against top North Island driver Caleb Huston – and Open.
The Nelson club was quick to throw its support behind the new 4-stroke Briggs and Stratton LO206 clubsport category and this weekend there are five drivers contesting the Briggs Light class and three running in Briggs Heavy.
The long-running Sunbelts Sprint Championships event runs to a unique format over the two days being regarded effectively as one meeting of nine races per class using an eight-heat with predetermined grids plus Final format.
The first five heats with pre-determined grids are run at Blenheim on Saturday while the other three plus the Final (with the grids for each class Final based on the lowest points from the heats) are run at Nelson on Sunday.
Once each class Final is run and won drivers then get to drop their worst result from the nine races to decide the overall Sunbelts class winners for the year,
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