SA’s 12-yearold World Champion

ANOTHER South African World Champion was crowned this weekend, when 12-year-old Jayden Els from Boksburg won the Mini Max category at the 2016 Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals held in Sarno, Italy.

Jayden, who qualified for his trip to the kart finals by winning the Rotax Africa Open Mini Max category for drivers aged nine to 12 in South Africa inJuly this year, finished the main event with less than a second gap to second-placed Thomas Nepveu from Canada, with Luka Nurmi of Finland third.

“I would like to dedicate this victory to my grandfather,” said the grade six learner. Jayden’s grandfather recently passed away, and he said he knew his grandfather ‘was watching’ as he took the chequered flag.

Jayden was part of a 13-driver South African team that competed at the Sarno circuit in this 17th edition of this World Championship event. Rotax karting is the most competitive series of its kind, as all 360 drivers taking part from over 50 countries have to qualify for the event in their respective countries.

Other notable performers from the South African team included Nick Verheul from Edenvale, who was the fastest qualifier out of 72 runners in the DD2 Masters class (for drivers 32 and over). He started the pre-final in eighth position, before being punted out of position in a miserably wet pre-final.

Luca Munaretto, also from Boksburg, was at one stage second overall in the qualifying events for the highly competitive DD2 class, where at the age of 14 he was the youngest competitor by far. But unfortunately he was eliminated when the weather turned late in the week, and didn’t make the finals. The wet conditions on Thursday and Friday also caught out the likes of Justin Allison, Fabienne Lanz and Eugene Brittz, who were very quick in their qualification runs and heats. But they were at a disadvantage, like the rest of the South Africans, in the wet conditions, and finished with mixed results in respective class finals.