Editorial
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Tom Joyner, "the postman" kart World Champion 2013 (ahead of Verstappen)
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At times, sport generates unexpected fairy tales. It happened, for example, that the little Leicester City Football Club won the 2015-16 season of the Premier League or that (and we come to the world of motors) the Brawn GP, a newborn team that took over the opaque Honda for a pound, won (in 2009 with Jenson Button) the Formula 1 world championship on its debut, and then shut down. Or, again, it can happen that, in karting, a postman wins the world championship in the premier class of single-speed karts by beating the two-time F1 world champion, Max Verstappen. "I had finished school and found myself facing a gap year before going to University. So I was a postman because it was a job compatible with my sporting commitments: I could race in competitions and return safely on Mondays. I stopped working as a postman only in 2016" says Tom Joyner, KF world champion (now OK) in 2013, today a technician in the ranks of KR Motorsport, amid the laughter of listeners. Because, it must be admitted, you laugh when you discover that the athletic driver, very fast, contemptuous of risk who, among other things, is also a world kart champion, during the week, "to keep fit" (and, as a good young man, to earn a few bucks) ... delivered mail house to house!
What is curious, however, is more or less all of Tom's entire career. In a sport in which those who lead the way and win usually appear on the stage of international competitions (WSK, FIA Karting ...) as soon as their age allows it in the MINI class (therefore at about 10 years old), Tom followed a rather unique path: " I had raced and won only in England, until at 18, ready to go to University, I said to myself: OK, this is the last year in which I will race and then I will stop.
Born in 1992, Tom Joyner began racing in karts as a child in his motherland, the United Kingdom. In 2011 he competed in the first World Cup while from 2012 he competed on a permanent basis at international level and became world champion in 2013 in the KF class. After racing until 2017 with a Zanardi chassis, in 2018 he faced his last year of racing with Sodikart. He currently works as a technician in KR Motorsport.
However, I won the North European Trophy in KF2 which was worth qualifying for the European Championship, I participated in the World Cup and the following year I raced with Rickard [Kaell Franchini, editor’s note] in the LH Racing Team with a Lewis Hamilton branded chassis (brand in the orbit of CRG - editor’s note). It all started there”. In 2013, Tom moved to the court of Dino Chiesa, to Chiesa Corse, with the Zanardi chassis (another CRG brand, editor’s note) and IAME engines. A particular year because, as a teammate, we find a certain Lance Stroll: “It was all very different from how I had always competed. It was just the two of us with a huge truck: it all seemed a bit ridiculous (and he laughs, editor's note). We struggled for most of the season, it was the year of the new aproval and the IAME engines were not on their best form. They improved a lot over the months, but Lawrence Stroll (the millionaire businessman, Lance’s father, editor’s note) wanted the best engine”. In fact, a few days before the start of the FIA Karting World Championship in the KF class, Tom discovered that he and Lance weree to race with TM Racing engines: "They called me on the Monday or Tuesday before the race, I was still in the entry-list with IAME engines. In part I was happy because I would have worked with GFR (British tuner of international calibre, editor's note) who followed me when I was very young, but at the same time it didn't seem nice to part with IAME after all the effort made together to be competitive”.
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