Friday Night Challenge Round 5. 08/02/2019
Good evening everyone and welcome back for another round of Kingston Park Raceways Friday Night Challenge. Round 5 saw drivers come down to compete for the top step on our Coca Cola podium. Throughout the night we saw some very quick lap times and race pace from Harry Collins setting the fastest lap of the night with a 61.930 and winning every race apart from one in which he was just beaten by Denis Colloti at turn 7 of the last lap during heat number 3.
The 4 made it through our heats and into the Final with some very clean racing all night with only 1 black flag given which was during practice. Harry Collins qualified first for the final with 178 points with Denis Colloti starting off second with 176 points, Lachlan Callaghan started third with 168 points and Samuel Bobao started from the rear in fourth with 162 points.
Always evolving and trying something new, race control decided to try a standing start for the super final opposed to the regular rolling starts we always see on Friday Night Challenge. The competitors where itching to get onto the grid and try out the standing starts all hoping to gain an advantage. They were instructed that the lights on the main straight would be yellow whilst they grid up and once everyone had lined up the yellows would then turn off and shortly after the greens would come on to get the racing underway.
Our 4 drivers are all eager to get into the karts and get some good, hard racing under way. The marshals got them into the go karts as they, fired the engines up and sent them out on their warm up lap. Completion of the warm up lap the marshals got all the drivers gridded up and ready to go shortly after the yellow lights went off than bang the greens come on and we are off! All 4 were very clean through turn 1 and were all neck and neck leading into turn 2, all 4 drivers got away very nicely. At the completion of lap 1 we saw Harry Collins leading Denis Colloti and Lachlan Callaghan by less than a second with Samuel Lobao struggling to stay with the front 3. Harry Collins is just starting to put little gap on the rest of the field to complete lap 2 with Denis Colloti and Lachlan Callaghan neck and neck over 2nd and 3rd with Samuel Lobao making a few mistakes dropping 9 seconds behind our leaders. Starting lap 4 we see our front 3 all putting in 63 second lap times and all within 2 seconds of each other with Samuel Lobao dropping a further 26 seconds behind our leader. 3 laps to go and Harry Collins has a 1.1 second buffer over Denis Colloti in 2nd with Lachlan Callaghan a further 2.1 seconds behind Denis. With 2 laps to go we see Harry Collins extend his lead to 1.3 seconds, at this rate he almost has his hands on the gold medal already. Denis Colloti has pulled a bit more of a gap between him and Lachlan Callaghan making sure 2nd stays his. Last lap to go and Harry Collins has extended his lead to 1.8 seconds over Denis Colloti with Denis holding a nice 3.3 second lead over Lachlan Callaghan in 3rd with Samuel having a lonely race in 4th 36 seconds behind our leader. To complete our last lap we see Harry Collins win by 2 seconds over Denis Colloti in 2nd, Harry Collins also posted the fastest lap of the race on the last lap with a 62.770. Denis Colloti came home comfortably in 2nd over Lachlan Callaghan who finished off in 3rd rounding off our final podium places. Samuel finished the final in 4th.
There was some great racing by all in round 5 of our Friday Night Challenge but if you think you have what it takes to take home the Gold make sure you make your way down to Kingston Park Raceway every Friday night for racing on our 1100metres Le Mans track from 6:30pm until late. Or, if you want to secure your spots on the grid call our friends Sales Team on 07 3826 2255 to book in.
