Kart fans from around the country – indeed around the world – can enjoy the action from this weekend’s Blossom Sprint kart meeting in Hawke’s Bay thanks to a decision to Livestream the event via Facebook with the assistance of Kiwi Motorsport Media and MTF Vehicle Finance Napier.
The annual two-day meeting at the KartSport Hawke’s Bay club’s Chemz Raceway at Roys Hill on the outskirts of Hastings has been a fixture on the KartSport New Zealand calendar for as long as most current karters can remember.
This year’s is in fact the 49th with plans already well in hand for the 50th in a year’s time.
With its traditional first-weekend-in-September date the Blossom meeting heralds a new karting season with a unique two-day format which sees drivers race round the 687m track in a clockwise direction on Saturday then anti-clockwise direction on Sunday.
The Blossom event is the biggest on the Kartsport Hawke’s Bay club’s annual calendar and has a storied past, effectively spanning the history of the sport in this country.
The inaugural event was a road race around the streets of Hastings in the mid-1960s and over the decades it has been run in many different formats. One was a sprint meeting on the Saturday at the Roys Hill track then a road race on the Sunday just down the road at the Thunder Park drag strip which has now been turned into a vineyard.
Over the years Hawke’s Bay has produced some of the country’s best karters, some of whom – the likes of four-time Bathurst 1000 winner Greg Murphy and the late Ashley Stichbury, a two-time New Zealand Formula Ford as well as TraNZam and Touring Car champion – went on to further success here and overseas in cars.
That rivalry continues today, with their sons Ronan Murphy and Zac Stichbury both competing this weekend, Murphy in the Junior Rotax class and Stichbury in Junior Yamaha as well as Junior Rotax.
The Livestream link is: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1628730210534037/?hc_ref=ARRAUCdcQHPggBPjKtN5RPrNWGrEJXFWB0orNx4U_vZ6THMECuor968jaajcwpSKmYs
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