Photo: Ida Wood
Ethan Jeff-Hall won the world championship for OK karts in a sodden final at PF International decided with a last lap move.
It had been raining on-and-off for several hours leading up to the final, but just as the senior karters took to the grid the wind speed picked up and the rain worsened.
Kart Republic’s Joe Turney was on pole, having dominated the event up to that point, and chose the right-hand lane for the start in the hope it would have more grip. After a false start due to some drivers not having lined up properly (and the loss of Red Bull junior Scott Lindblom on the formation lap at the esses), the race began.
One driver failed to get going and two collided immediately, and Turney was the only one on track with decent visibility as everyone else was immediately immersed in spray.
The conditions led to several more drivers crashing out before the opening lap was complete, and an order was pretty much set with Turney leading CRG’s Jeff-Hall, Energy Corse’s Matthew Higgins, VDK Racing’s Fionn McLaughlin, Kart Republic’s Dmitry Mateev and Victory Lane’ Jimmy Helias.
Higgins almost went into the rear of Jeff-Hall at the chicane and again later around the lap, since he had more pace, and he was able to get past on the pit straight before starting lap three. He then hunted down Turney, being on his rear at the chicane but then sliding at the final hairpin and dropping 1.4 seconds back from the leader.
He got the gap back down to under a second at the end of lap five, with Parolin’s Zac Drummond now in seventh after Kart Republic’s David Cosma exited proceedings. A stuck throttle put Suleiman Zanfari out, then McLaren junior Dries Van Langendonck crashed too.
Jeff-Hall came back at Higgins on lap six and they made contact in the final sector, with the momentum that Higgins lost from it meaning Jeff-Hall returned to second place. Turney meanwhile set the fastest lap to pull 1.947s clear, despite the rain worsening. Two laps later Jeff-Hall stole the fastest lap, and the gap between the top two began to decrease.
Turney had less than a second in hand at the end of lap 10, but then Jeff-Hall got crossed up in the esses and it grew to 1.6s again. He was finding that as soon as he got close to Turney, the excessive spray was contributing to mistakes that undid his chasing.
In the second half of the 22-lap race he adapted to that, bringing the gap down to 0.7s and then being able to keep his distance to Turney for several laps. He realised that taking different racing lines to Turney helped keep his kart on track when right behind him, and so the two Britons ended up being faster than each other in different areas of the track.
Williams junior Sasha Bondarev crashed out of eighth on lap 15, and one of the backmarkers was coming into sight of Turney. Although blue flags meant they would have to let the top two by, the excessive rain meant lapping cars was still going to be difficult.
Jeff-Hall got within 0.5s of Turney on lap 16, and had a run on him next time by into hairpin one. He remained stuck to his rear, albeit on his different line into corners, through the next lap and Turney responded by going fastest in sector one.
There was 0.6s between them thereon, with Higgins using clear air to take the fastest lap behind them. The result looked settled until Turney approached the banking on the last lap, as he slid off entirely and Jeff-Hall moved past on just his second appearance on an OK kart.
Results to follow