PRESS RELEASE - TKART - In Castelletto, the Birel ART Racing Team conquered its first legendary podium in the KFJ category. After the debut podium swept at the Winter Cup, the Lissone team wrapped up the second round of the WSK Super Master with Ulysse De Pauw in second place.

Despite terrible track conditions and incessant downpours throughout Sunday, the Factory Team was able to give a fantastic ending to a weekend that saw them on top in every class, rain or shine. After stopping the watch with the sixth fastest lap on Friday, De Pauw showed everyone what his kart is capable of: second and twice fourth in the heats and seventh in his Prefinal, in the final he did a phenomenal rise from fourteenth to second.

Birel ART Racing also made the top 10 in KFJ with very fast-runners Tom Leuillet and Lucas Légeret. Seventeenth and eighteenth at the start of their Prefinal, the two stormed the field to close tenth and fifth respectively. In the Final, Leuillet replicated the climb, charging from twentieth to seventh. Légeret followed in ninth place, doing a great job of making up for a contact that had pushed him back in the opening stages of the race. Lucas was one of the fastest drivers in the race and without any contact he would have surely achieved a deserved podium.

Unfortunately, the weekend took an unfortunate turn for the other KFJ driver on track, Timothy Peisselon: thirteenth in his Prefinal session, in the Final he saw his top 10 hopes go up in smoke after a penalty relegated him to place twenty. Considering the speed he showed, Timothy will soon have a new opportunity to finish in a better position, starting from next round at La Conca.

Bad luck played tricks also on Rasmus Lindh and the Ricciardo Kart Racing team. The Swedish driver started the Prefinal from fifth place, but two laps from the end a technical problem forced him to retire. The unhappy ending came as a bitter surprise, considering how well his chassis did throughout the heats, on a dry track: victory in heat one, then third and fifth in the other two races.

In KZ2, the challenging track conditions of the Final kept both teams from replicating the results they collected in dry and moist conditions up to then. Prefinal winner Jordon Lennox-Lamb wrapped up the weekend in fifth place, followed in seventh place by Birel ART teammate Marijn Kremers, whose weekend results include Friday’s sixth fastest lap and third place in heat 2 and again in the Prefinal.

In the top category, the Ricciardo Kart Racing team celebrated a great debut by new entry Rick Dreezen. Already in the top 10 of the qualifyings, the Belgian proved how comfortable he is with his new chassis all weekend long. Ninth and eleventh in the heats, in the Prefinal he picked up the pace and entered in full contention for victory by closing third, then drove his Ricciardo Kart into eighth place across the ultimate finish-line. Unfortunately, things didn’t go as well for his teammate Mirko Torsellini. The Italian was forced to retire due to a race contact, after taking a top 10 result in the Prefinal.

General Manager Gianluca Beggio: “Ulysse De Pauw’s podium and the results that our Birel ART and Ricciardo Kart drivers collected in KFJ and KZ2 are a rewarding sign of the hard work we are all doing to improve chassis quality and performance, in the factory as well as on track.”

Next event: WSK Super Master Series - Round 3: La Conca International Circuit, 9-12 April 2015

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