Harvey takes fifth to retain championship hopes at Sarno

Jack Harvey picked up more points in the penultimate round of the Winning Series of Karting (WSK) Championship at the weekend to maintain his title aspirations as his rivals failed to make headway.

The Alpinestars backed factory Birel Motorsport racer went into the meeting second in the title race, just a single point away from the leader with just four more point-scoring races left on the 2008 calendar. In the early stages of the weekend, the newly crowned Asia-Pacific Champion set some very quick times and headed into the heats on Saturday with confidence.

However, in qualifying he was unable to match his earlier times and had to settle for a frustrating 28th fastest time, giving him plenty of work to do throughout his heats.

On Sunday morning with just two more heats to run, Jack and his Birel squad made some changes to the chassis and made some big strides towards the front of the field with a seventh and second place in the last two races before the finals.

In the first final he started 14th and got a good start but was tapped by a rival and forced to take a wide line through the first corner. Despite not losing any track positions, it put him out of contention to make up places on the opening lap and he had to settle for 11th place at the flag, just outside the all-important points.

In the grand final, he got another good start and was able to challenge right through the 15-laps and eventually took a hard earned 5th place. Despite missing out on a bigger points-haul, Jack was pleased with him performance, coming back from 28th fastest to fifth and maintaining a single point deficit to the current series’ leader.

“I felt confident going into the weekend after the speed we had at the European qualifying meeting and the early pace here,” he said. “I was frustrated a little bit about being unable to challenge as hard as I would have liked, but we managed to fight and bring home some very valuable points in the main final.

“I could look at the weekend as a bad one in that I was unable to take advantage of my rival’s lack of big results too and not pulling ahead in the championship. But, I had to work hard for what I got and I am pleased to come away still in the same position as I arrived in, with a brilliant chance to still take the WSK KF2 title. It will go down to the grand final at the last round and I am really looking forward to it,” he added.

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