Hello Milena,

This past weekend was the first round of the 2013 West Coast Prokart Challenge held at Buttonwillow Raceway in Southern California.   We were fortunate to have last years MS Kart driver Brody Zink back piloting the RZF 29 for hopefully the remainder of the Prokart rounds.  Brody had previously been our Rotax driver, but is now pursuing a shifter kart career with a rival brand and team, so it was good to have him back driving the familiar RZF 29 and the new Leopard TAG package.

In practice, we had problems with breaking drive chains and battery problems. Just annoying problems that kept us from sorting out the new package during the limited practice sessions.  Come race day we knew we had fast equipment, but not fast enough to be race winning yet.

The field was stacked with 32 of the fastest and most experienced Senior TAG racers, all there to claim first victory of the season.  In qualifying, Brody qualified 16th, which was 4 tenths of a second off pole time.  The first heat Brody had a good start and jumped into the top ten running on the track, then disaster struck after a mere three laps when the chain once again flung off giving him a DNF.

In the second heat, Brody had to start dead last in 32nd position.  Making a great start again, he managed to race up to the 16th position.

For the 20 lap main, we started in 16th position.  When the green flag flew, Brody was able to make another incredible start and raced very hard all the way into 6th position. The kart was handling perfectly till 8 laps to go, when the chassis started to get a little too stuck in the rear, causing understeer at two important corner exits.  Unfortunately this caused us to come under attack from our fellow competitors and dropped us back to a 9th place finish.

At the end of the day, we were happy with our racing results despite the DNF.  We came away from this race learning a new tire and engine combination and look forward to developing the kart before the next round at the begining of March at Willow Springs.

Thanks to all at the MS Kart factory.

Regards,

Greg