Victor Martins’ karting protege stars as European Championship begins

Photo: FIA Karting

Round one of the CIK-FIA European championship at Campillos was a breakthrough event for two karting talents.

Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 junior James Anagnostiadis won the senior OK category, but for much of the weekend it looked like Formula 2 racer Victor Martins’ protege Chiara Battig would be victorious.

The 15-year-old Swiss was in the Alpine F1 team’s female-focused Rac(H)er programme in 2023, but departed it for 2024. Although she won a third successive Swiss championship on OK Junior karts, she lacked results abroad until November when she joined Martins and his brother Nicolas’s Victory Lane team for the step up to senior karting.

Two eye-catching outings raised expectations for 2025, but bad luck masked Battig’s pace earlier this year. That changed at Campillos on Friday, as with slick tyres on a damp track she set “a perfect lap” to take pole. Anagnostiadis was ninth, 0.411 seconds off the pace, and VDK Racing’s Thibaut Ramaekers and Tony Kart’s Thomas Pradier topped the other qualifying groups in slippier conditions.

Anagnostiadis and Battig also ran in the same heats, and in a wet first race Ramaekers comfortably beat both. Anagnostiadis climbed seven places to beat Battig to second.

Battig won and Anagnostiadis was third in their next two heats, Forza Racing’s Filippo Sala denied Battig victory in their fourth heat then she rebounded to comfortably beat Anagnostiadis and Sala as they shared the podium in their final heat.

Anagnostiadis’s Mercedes stablemate and Prema team-mate Kenzo Craigie was 14th in his qualifying group, but recovered to make fifth his average finishing position in the heats.

Battig built a lead from pole in superheat A, with Anagnostiadis and Craigie starting second and sixth. McLaren junior Dries Van Langendonck got into second and Craigie gained two spots on lap one.

Craigie utilised fresh tyres to make three passes in the next three laps, but his hesitant then crash-causing lap four move on Battig ended her race. He rode over her hand too, and after winning by two seconds was disqualified so Anagnostiadis inherited victory.

Ramaekers led lights-to-flag in superheat B, which combined with three heat wins denied Anagnostiadis pole for the final, with the confident Battig starting eighth. Kart Republic’s reigning champion Joe Turney had such a bad weekend that he failed to make the 19-lap final.

Van Langendonck passed Anagnostiadis on lap one of the decisive race, then Fusion Motorsport’s Zac Drummond cleared him too. But as Anagnostiadis “did not expect at all to win”, he was taking it easy and was aware of a puncture risk.

Van Langendonck took the lead at the penultimate corner on lap eight, with Drummond behind Anagnostiadis and Sala. Soon Ramaekers was losing further ground, and Forza’s Jensen Burnett got involved before he punctured.

Kart Republic’s Iacopo Martinese, from 14th on the grid, passed Sala for third on lap 12, and Anagnostiadis claimed the lead a lap later. He then pulled away as punctures ended Drummond and Martinese’s victory hopes, and Van Langendonck held off Sala for second at the finish.

But a bumper penalty demoted Sala to 10th, so a late charge from Parolin’s pre-event favourite Christian Costoya earned him third ahead of Ramaekers and Battig.

Final results (19 laps)