European Championship finals get underway at Braga

The third and last round of the CIK-FIA European KF1 Championship will be held on the Portuguese circuit of Braga on 1-3 August 2008. As well as being decisive for the CIK-FIA European KF1 Champion title, the event will also constitute the final rehearsal in real conditions before the World Championship, to be organised at Muro Leccese in Italy on 21 September.

There are still very many drivers who can mathematically claim the title, but in view of the points scored by everyone there seems to be three favourites, namely the Briton Gary Catt (Tony Kart-Vortex), the Italian Marco Ardigo (Tony Kart-Vortex) and the Frenchman Arnaud Kozlinski (CRG-Maxter). These three have also shared the wins in the four races held until now.

After a not very successful start in France, the 2007 European and World Champion, Marco Ardigo, won both races of the Belgian round of the European Championship at the end of June. The leading three can obviously have a weak spell (one remembers for example the Braga circuit and its blazing sunshine, which had proved rough on the equipment at the World Championship held there in 2005), and the first to benefit from this should then be France’s Armand Convers (PCR-TM) and Jean-Philippe Guignet (CRG-Maxter), Italy’s Sauro Cesetti (Birel-TM) or such ambitious youngsters as the likes of Libor Toman (Birel-Parilla), Matias Laine (Tony Kart-Vortex), Yannick de Brabander (Intrepid-TM) and Jack Te Braak (Zanardi-Parilla).

The Braga international circuit will also host the Final of the CIK-FIA European KF2 Championship. In this case, there will just be one final. In order to try to draw up a list of favourites, some indications can be drawn from the regional qualifying events that have been used to select the 72 drivers eligible for this European final, although some drivers may have deliberately chosen to favour their qualification instead of performance during these selection events. Be that as it may, the intermediary laureates were the Brit Tom Grice (Gillard-Parilla, 1st in the “Western” Region), the Italian Aniello Smarrazzo (FA Kart-Vortex, 1st in the “Central” Region) and the Swede Joel Johansson (Energy-TM, 1st in the “Northern” Region).

The 2007 European Juniors Champion, who has also recently won the Asia-Pacific KF2 Championship held in Japan, Britain’s Jack Harvey (Birel-Parilla) will be another serious candidate for victory. As well as crowning the 2008 European KF2 Champion, the Braga event will designate the 34 European Championship drivers authorised to participate in the CIK-FIA World Cup of that same category.

Information and live results are on cikfia.com.

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