Chris Glover drove 4,492 kilometres from his home
in Vancouver to compete in the ASN Canada FIA National Karting Championships at
Goodwood Kartways last Sunday and he could have saved himself the trip.
His race lasted less than two laps.
Glover, 29, was racing in the Rotax Senior class
— one of seven classes in which national champions were crowned — and was
hoping for a good finish.
When it didn’t happen, when he lost control and
rode his kart into the boonies and was unable to get it restarted, all he could
do was shrug his shoulders and get ready for the long drive back home.
Glover — a computer programmer of video racing
games who once upon a time harboured ambitions of a professional racing career
— didn’t have a lot of pressure on him, unlike most of the other competitors
battling wheel-to-wheel and pedal-to-the-metal at the Stouffville-area track on
the weekend.
He’d already won one of 10 coveted seats on Team
Canada — the ASN Canada FIA-supported kart team that will travel to Sharm El
Sheikh, Egypt, in December for the world karting finals.
Glover earned his spot when he won the Western
Canadian Championship in his class 10 days ago in Calgary.
Three other champions from the Calgary
competition were also named to Team Canada, leaving the remaining six seats up
for grabs at the national finals last Sunday.
So the competition was, as you can imagine,
fierce.
For Glover, the seat on Team Canada is the dream
of a lifetime.
“I’ve been in the sport for 20 years,” he said,
“and I’ve never raced abroad. I’ve never been off the continent, actually, so
I’m really looking forward to going.”
Glover said racing in the Rotax Senior class can
be, for want of a better word, “interesting.”
“The minimum age is 15,” he said,”"so I’m
out there against kids who are literally half my age. Some of them are very
fast, but they don’t have the experience.
“It’s an interesting mix sometimes. You’ve got
some experienced drivers running at the front of the pack mixed in with some
talented kids who have a lot of raw speed.”
Glover was at Goodwood on Sunday with his brother
Kevin — who once raced against Danica Patrick in a kart race and beat her, he
says — and the father-son team of Murray and Daniel Burkett, who travelled to
the nationals from Winnipeg.
They were among about 200 kart/driver
combinations entered. Between 1,000 and 1,500 people turned out to spectate in
glorious sunshine on Sunday afternoon.
Notes
- Most of the teams stayed at Goodwood during the
weekend and camped out. Accommodations ranged from pup tents to house trailers
to expensive motorhomes. And by the way: many of the transporters would not
look out of place in a NASCAR or IRL paddock.
- Karting is not a cheap sport. To start out in
the junior classes – kart, trailer, racing gear, etc. – will cost you in the
range of $6,000. To race in the top divisions can cost $30,000-plus with an
emphasis on the plus.
- Peter Klutt of Legendary Motorcar in Halton
Hills was proud as punch Sunday. His two sons, Gary and Ryan, both won their
respective races and are national champions in their classes – Gary in Canada
Senior and Ryan in Canada Junior.
- Asked if there had been a carrot on a stick if
one or the other won, Klutt laughed and said: "We asked what they wanted
as a reward and they said they wanted to eat a McDonald’s so that’s where we’re
going."
- I eavesdropped as one 8-year-old karter gave a
fellow 8-year-old a pre-race pep talk: "At the start, stay right beside him through
four and then dive-bomb him going into five. That’s how you’ll get him."
- Hugo Oullette, who won the Rotax Senior class,
bumped wheels with his brother, former world champion Pierre Luc. Asked by a
reporter from ekartingnews.ca about brotherly love, Hugo Oullette shrugged and
said: "He was in the way, so I hit him."
RESULTS:
(All from Ontario, unless otherwise noted)
Canada Senior: Gary Klutt, Kevin Monteith, Darryl
Timmers
Canada Junior: Ryan Klutt, Bryson Schutte, Joshua
Dunand
Rotax Senior: Hugo Oullette (Que.), Marco Di Leo,
Massimo Scotti (Que.)
Rotax Junior: Garrett Grist, Steven Szigeti
(Que.), Tommy Beshro (Que.)
Rotax Micro Max: Devlin Defrancesco (U.S.), Tyler
Ripani, Austin Riley
Rotax DD2: Frank Launi, Daniel Morad, Sal Ditta;
DD2 Master (over age 32), Mark Woyslaw
Rotax Mini Max: Samuel Fontaine (Que.), Lance
Stroll (Que.), Jack West (U.S.)
Bullet
Five Jim Russell Racing Drivers School
scholarships (the school is at Le Circuit Mont-Tremblant in Quebec) were
presented by the Stroll family (Lawrence Stroll) to Darren White, Hugo
Oullette, Steven Szigeti and Gary and Ryan Klutt.
