This weekend was round two of the Wera Tools British Karting Championship run by Motorsport UK and was held at Mansell Raceway in Devon. Malmesbury’s Louis Harvey was hoping to move up the standing after the Final race was cancelled due to poor weather in Round 1.

The event kicked off with two morning practise sessions in which Harvey felt he performed well, being only a few tenths off the fastest drivers.

Then it was straight into timed qualifying, and Harvey placed himself well on track, getting good positioning for a clean fast lap. Harvey still lacked a bit of pace compared to the front runners but qualified 10th in his group, which placed him thirteenth overall and determined his starting position for both his heats.

Harvey had a good start in heat 1 and after maintaining his position for a few laps made his way up to 11th where he stayed throughout the race, having to defend his position on the last few laps until the chequered flag.

Heat 2 and Harvey made a sterling start and was straight on the back of the leading pack. Unfortunately, halfway through the race his engine developed a misfire almost bringing him to a stop on track. The sudden loss of power saw him drop way down the field until the issue cleared itself after 3 laps leaving him with a lot of work to do. Still slightly down on power Harvey managed to claw his way back up to 15th before crossing the finishing line.

With the points added up from the heats Harvey had qualified 19th for the prefinal and after another very good start was quickly up to 14th. He continued to push his way through the field eventually coming home in 10th place and setting his starting position for the main final.

Starting 10th, Harvey had high hopes for another top 10 finish, which would have secure him some solid points in the championship. However, going into the first corner he was hit from behind and sandwiched between two other karts dislodging his nose cone and spitting him off to the to the outside of the track. This dropped him way down the field to around 19th, undeterred he knew he had the pace to make his way back up through the field and recover some of his lost positions. After some hard battling and defending, Harvey crossed the line in 11th place but with the first corner incident resulting in him having a nose cone penalty was awarded a 5 second penalty, dropping him back down the field to 16th place.

Despite the disappointment in the final Harvey secured solid points over the weekend which promoted him 23rd in the championship up to 18th. With three more rounds to go Harvey is still aiming for a top 10 finish in his first year in the Senior Rotax class.