Antonelli storms to WSK OKJ Euro Series title
The final round of the WSK Euro series saw the series make the trip to Adria to do battle. 56 drivers from over 20 countries were there to do battle, with the championship still up for grabs. Andrea Antonelli was in the driving seat holding a 22 point advantage over Thomas Ten Brinke in 2nd with a further 12 points back to Nikita Bedrin. With 80 points up for grabs in the final alone, a lot could change over the weekend.
Antonelli stamped his authority on proceedings by topping the time sheets in Qualifying 2, which was just 0.02s clear of Ten Brinke who set his time in Qualifying 1. It was a return to form for Ugo Ugocgukwo who was 2nd fastest with Akshay Bohra 4th fastest. Bedrin was down in 8th, setting a time just over 0.15s slower than his championship rivals.
Antonelli was almost unbeatable in the heats as well, taking 2 out of 3 wins, finishing 2nd in heat 1 to Artem Severiukhin, who had been 6th fastest in qualifying. Ten Brinke also took a pair of heat wins, but his first heat didn’t go to plan, with him finishing down in 13th, that would leave him 7th in the standings. 2nd in the standings was Ten Brinke’s team mate Laurens Van Hoepen, with a pair of 2nd and a 4th, which was just enough to beat out Alfio Spina in 3rd. Bedrin would stay in the top 5 in the heats, lining up 4th. After his strong showing in qualifying Ugochukwu took a heat 1 but failed to finish his 2nd heat leaving him 15th in the standings. One driver out of position was Oli Pylka, the polish driver had shown flashes of pace throughout the year, however he qualified last and finished outside the top 20 in each of the heats, leaving him last overall.
The field was then split in half for the pre-finals, Antonelli took final A by almost 4 seconds from Spina and Ten Brinke. Ugochukwo managed to climb up to 4th to give him a solid starting position for the final. The big mover was Pylka, who found his pace, managing to climb 12 places to finish 16th and jump onto the back of the final. Meanwhile, Alex Dunne climbed 3 places to take the win in Pre-Final B and secure a front row place alongside Antonelli, Van Hoepen finished an extremely close 2nd with Bohra a further 2 tenths behind the leaders. Arvid Lindblad was an impressive 4th, all be it 1.8 seconds further behind.
Under the lights of Adria, the final was another dominant performance for Antonelli, held the lead form the start, and drove away from the chasing pack, building a gap of almost 2 seconds from the chasing pack. Ten Brinke spent the early part of the race fighting his way through from his 5th place starting position. By the end of the opening lap he was up to 3rd, having dropped Van Hoepen and Alex Dunne with just Spina ahead of him. Ugouchukwo would join in with the battle as Dunne would drop to 5th. What started was a 3 way battle for 2nd between the pair of RFM drivers and KartRepublic’s Spina. Ten Brinke would get to the front of the pack, and start pulling away from Spina and Ugochukwo.
Bedrin would struggle to make ground on his rivals, having started 10th, it wouldn’t be until lap 10 where he started to make moves up the field. As Ten Brinke drove away, Spina lost out to Ugochukwo and then Van Hoepen. The young Italian struggling to stick with the pace of the front runners dropped back into the chasing pack. He first lost out to team mate Bohra, who began backing the pack up as the top 4 streamed away. It was now a train of karts, with Bohra, Lindblad and Bedrin inseparable as they crossed the line. Bohra couldn’t hang on, as Lindblad and Bedrin hit the front of the pack with 2 laps remaining.
It would all end in tears, as an incident between Dunne, Jamie Day, Bedrin would see the trio drop out of the fight with just 2 laps to go. The incident wouldn’t stop leader Antonelli from claiming the race win by 3.5 seconds ahead of Ten Brinke who would have to settle for 2nd in the race and the championship standings. Ugochukwu would hang on for 3rd with Laurens Van Hoepen just missing out on the podium in 4th. The battle for 5th was eventually won by Artem Severiukhin, who got the better of Lindblad on the final lap.
The perfect weekend sees Andrea Kimi Antonelli seal the WSK Euro Series by 68 points ahead of Ten Brinke. Despite the DNF, Bedrin hangs on to 3rd in the standings, 18 points ahead of Ugochukwu who just edges ahead of Lindblad by 4 points to secure 4th in the standings.
The next WSK Competition for the OKJ drivers will be the Open cup in October.
