Barrichello: “When I was young I didn’t have enough money for the World Championship”

Looking at the final scoreboard it looks as though Rubens Barrichello wasn’t up to the 2016 KZ World Championship level, but when you look at all the aspects, it’s a lie.
 
“First of all, when I think to the world championship, my first thought is my father who said to me ‘we can’t afford the world championship’, so it has been very touching for me being here. I finished 24th and it seems a really bad result, but my team mate, who is a professional driver, is in 22nd, so it’s not that bad!” says Rubens Barrichello “I’ve been training with a Rotax DD2 in order to be fit physically, but it’s not the same thing: here the level of competition is really high! For me it’s important that I was ok physically and to have fun. Maybe I’ll return to international  karting events in the future, who knows…!”
 
Rubens was right: let’s compare his racing weekend with his team mate’s, the 2012 KZ2 World Cup champion Jordon Lennox-Lamb…
 
In qualifying the Brazilian driver stopped best lap, 50,099 seconds, one second slower than the poleman (and future world champion) Paolo De Conto on CRG-Tm, while Jordon Lennox-Lamb lapped at 49,396, six tenth faster. In the first heat Barrichello finished 22nd with a fastest time, 50,227 seconds, while the Brit was 30th because he got a time penalty (10 seconds) for “incorrectly installed front fairing”, but his fastest lap is only three tenth of a second faster: 49,913 seconds for him. Same thing for heat 2: Rubens finished 22nd and Jordon 29th, penalized once again for front fairing being incorrectly positioned. The gap between their fastest laps is a little bit bigger: four tenth of a second.
 
Lennox-Lamb starts 32^nd for the prefinal and finished the race 25th, ahead of his team mate who crossed the line 28th. The gap in terms of pure speed remains unchanged: four tenth of a second also in the prefinal. In the final race Lennox-Lamb got another time penalty for the same reason, which puts him down to 22nd, two places ahead of Rubens Barrichello with a half second gap between their best laps.
 
Karters know how important training is for performance and, looking at their results, we can say that without any training Rubens is only four tenth of second slower on average than his 24 year-old team mate. Well done Rubinho…