Impressive performance in Genk!

The last round of the CIK-FIA is due to come: it will be raced on the last weekend of July in Genk. On the last weekend in Genk there has been disputed the third of five rounds of the German Kart Championship, and all teams and drivers used this event to test themselves in occasion on the last round of the Continental championship. The last time that a CIK-FIA European round was raced on this circuit was on June 2014: it was the first round of the KZ, KZ2 and Academy; and the third round of the KF championship. Comparing results from 2014 and from the last race, we noted a big gap in terms of performance.

First of all if you want to know results of the third round of the DKM, here is the article.

New OK engines debutted this year, so we compared them with the KF category equipped with Dunlop tyres. In 2014 Lando Norris set a laptime of 53.549 seconds in qualifying, while this year Alex Smolyar stopped the chrono in 51.721 seconds. Both drivers were equipped with Vortex engines, so the gap is slightly less than 2”!

If we compare the KZ2, this year the fastest in qualifying was Alexander Schmitz (BirelArt/Vortex) lapping in 51.402 seconds with Vega tyres. Back to 2014, Arnaud Kozlinski (intrepid/TM) was the fastest in qualifiers with 52.861 seconds using Bridgestone tyres. Also in this category there’s a huge difference: 1.5 seconds.

In short, in only two years the evolution of karting reaches the maximum peak giving drivers very powerful karts. This huge gap depends on tyres or new engines? We know that OK engine (considered the better weight/power ratio) has a very important role in this improvement, while for the shifter category the major role is given by tyres.

In Genk for the last round of the CIK-FIA European Championship we’re gonna have some fun!