European title for Rotax Praga Kart Racing

Last weekend was the last round of the Rotax Max Euro Challenge at the 1.500m long circuit in Salbris(France). The „Rotax Praga Kart Racing“ team was leading the DD2 Masters championship with Martin Pierce (Ireland). The team managed to win the european title with a big lead after a week on a very difficult track for the drivers. The practice days started wednesday and thursday with sunny weather and good track conditions. The drivers improved a lot during these two days and everybody felt confident for the Qualifying on friday afternoon. The team found a good setup of the chassis and had very good engine performance. In the qualifying both drivers made a mistake in their best lap and unfortunetly had no slipstream, which makes a big difference at this track with its long straights, so they were just able to finish on 17th position for Max Fleischmann (Germany) and 22nd for Martin Pierce. The results were not as expected, but the performance on used tyres bolstered everybody up for the heats. In the heats Martin Pierce showed very good races, but had some problems due to smaller crashes, so he was able to gain only some places to 19th, 22nd and 17 position, which puts him on 20th position of sundays starting grid for the prefinal. Max Fleischmann had a collision in the second heat and some small accidents at the starts, so he had to finish on 14th, 19th and 12 position. This meant the 18th starting position for Max Fleischmann in the Prefinal. Despite some small crashes at the start the two finals went very well for Martin Pierce and he was able to score some very important points for the championship. At the start he lost some places, but during the race he showed a good speed to finish 2nd in the DD2 Masters class in the prefinal. In the final he just finished 4th, because he did not want to take any risks in the championship with a non finish race or a penalty in the last final of the season. This meant that he won the european title for Praga with a big lead in the end. Max Fleischmann had some problems with the engine in both finals and finished the prefinal in 14th and in the final had to stop his kart in the pits. After all it was a very good weekend for the team and the first title in their first season. The whole team and the praga factory worked hard through the season and got their worthy reward in the european rotax title. The team and especially the team manager Christian Fleischmann wants to say thank you to HRS Racing Engines and Praga for their good support during the season. The team now is looking forward to their last race in germany at the Rotax Max Challenge in Hahn.