CIK Angerville: Patterson Opens Account with Victory
The young Scottish driver Dexter Patterson has continued his recent run of strong form by taking victory at the first round of the CIK FIA European Championship at the wheel of his Sauber Karting Team Kart Republic frame.
It was clear from the start though, that victory wouldn’t be easy for any one, as Pedro Hiltbrand topped the time sheets in qualifying, piloting his CRG chassis around the French circuit in 48.795s. That being said, Patterson was only 0.012s behind in 2nd, with Juho Valtanen rounding out the top 3. Thanks to quick times by Taylor Barnard and Gabriele Mini’, the top 5 were within a tenth of each other. Which goes to show how competitive this field of 66 drivers is. By contrast, defending champion Hannes Janker could only get his Mclaren Customer Racing kart into 50th, despite only being half a second off the leaders pace.
Despite not setting the pace in qualifying, Patterson was the man to beat in the heats. He managed to win 4 out of 5 heats, finishing 6th in the last heat on Sunday. Valtanen had a similarly impressive run, finishing outside the top 3 just once, taking the 2nd best score of the heats. Mini’ would have 2 wins while staying in the top 5 to qualify 3rd. Dilano Vant’hoff was the highest placed driver not to take a victory in 4th, while Hiltbrand had an off in his 3rd heat, leaving him 6th in the standings. Janker fought hard to make up ground, but a highest finish of 8th wasn’t enough to get the German driver into the final, leaving him 36th overall. Just scraping through were the British duo of Joe Turney and Kai Askey. Turney had qualified 64th after issues in qualifying. Amazingly, reigning champion Hannes Janker failed to get into the final after qualifying 50th.
When the lights went out, Patterson and Mini’ rocketed into the lead, ahead of a slow starting Valtanen who dropped to 3rd, just keeping Barnard at bay. After a clean couple of corners, an incident saw 6 drivers out. That left Turney, Luigi Coluccio and Maya Weug out to name just a few. As the field crossed the line for the first time, Patterson lead from Mini’ Valtenen, Barnard and Vant’off. After a poor start, Pedro Hiltbrand started dropping down the order as his team mate Gabriel Bortoleto climbed up the order. It wasn’t long before Valtanen made the move for 2nd and tried to get on terms with Patterson, who had checked out at the front. The race settled down, with the chasing field trying to get on terms with Dexter Patterson. While further down the field Lorenzo Travisanutto was on the move, currently up in 8th ahead of Alessandro Irlando. Another driver on the move was Harry Thompson, up 4 places into 14th with over half of the race left to go.
Through out the race, the gaps at the front started fluctuated, but nobody could get on terms with Dexter Patterson, who took the win by 0.763s ahead of Juho Valtanen with Gabriele Mini’ taking 3rd. Barnard dropped back at the end, finishing 4th with Vant’hoff rounding out the top 5. After a strong start to the weekend, Hiltbrand finished down in 17th. After a perfect weekend, Patterson leads the championship on 35 points, Valtanen is 2nd on 29 with Mini’ a further 5 points behind on 24. Barnard and Vant’hoff round of the top 5 on 19 and 18 points respectively.
The next round of the European championship sees the drivers decent on Genk, Belgium on May 19th.
Image: CIK FIA
