Saskatoon teen goes to Brazil for go-kart world championship
SASKATOON He may not have his driver’s licence yet, but put him in a go-kart and 15-year-old Townes Allen can already drive circles around most people.
Along with his father, mechanic Tom Allen, Townes arrived in Brazil on Thursday for the weeklong Rotax Karting World Championships, which kick off Saturday. He will compete for the first time in the Junior division.
“Since I got into karting it has always been a thing — the world championships,” Townes said. “I’ve always had the dream to want to make it there, especially since my driving coach (Scott Campbell) has actually won it ... but it wasn’t until the last two years that it really started to click.”
Townes earned his ticket to Brazil after winning the Western Canadian Championship, and the title of Western Canadian Most Valuable Driver.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing to get this far.
Although his laps were fast, the team was plagued with some bad luck, leaving them in second place — significantly behind the front-runner — going into the final round, he said.
“It came down to the last day — the last race. We ended up battling neck and neck, and I just came out on top. So it was a really good feeling to know it wasn’t given to us, that we worked really hard for it.”
Townes started racing at 11 years old, after stumbling across the sport and watching a race. He and his dad were “instantly hooked.”
With Tom’s background as a longtime Motocross fan and Townes’ love of competitive sports it was a perfect fit, and they soon invested in a kart of their own.
“We got our first go-kart that same year and we just found ourselves at the track all the time after that,” Townes remembers. “It’s that feeling when you drive a perfect lap — when you feel totally in control of the kart.”
It takes a lot more than fast driving to make a perfect lap.
It’s a game of constant mental calculations for Townes as he drives at speeds up to 120 km/h, only slowing to make the turns. With braking and corners, the average track speed is about 70 km/h. Even being behind someone by a tenth of a second can mean the difference between placing first or placing fifth, Townes said.
“I’ve even had qualifying in this year at the Western Canadian Championships where I out-qualified a guy by 0.0005 seconds, so it gets really tight.”
Not only do you have to be mentally sharp, in good physical shape and ready to spend a significant amount of time practising — it also helps to have a good mechanic like Tom, who can make changes to the kart as Townes improves his driving skills.
However, Townes won’t get to drive his own kart during the Grand Finals. To keep things fair, Rotax will provide all incoming racers — there are 72 in the Junior division, including two other Canadians — with a new kart and engine.
As they head into competition, Townes and Tom are focused on keeping calm and sticking to the well-honed system that brought them this far.
“There’s going to be a lot of talented drivers coming from Europe — drivers who have been groomed at this age for high levels of racing ... So I think it will be a challenge to pit ourselves against those guys,” Tom said.
“I think that’s the big challenge for us to keep our cool and just keep doing what we do every day on that stage.”