Even for a pilot who is five-time World Champion, each new karting race can be considered a new beginning. Davide Fore experienced it himself at Angerville, at the first meeting of the European KF1 Championship, on 3 and 4 May. On the circuit where the Italian pilot conquered his latest world title, he hoped to win another top-level race. Unfortunately, the race proved to be much more difficult than he thought...
On Sunday evening, Davide Fore made a clear and realistic analysis of his weekend at Angerville. “When competition is so intense, you need to drive a spotless race to obtain good results. In my case, unfortunately, this was not possible. Once again, the qualifying round played a very important role. The ideal would have been to reach the top 10, but the time gaps were small and I finished 21st, just one tenth of a second away from the 12th position and two tenths away from the 4th position!”
“In the heats, the gap with the leaders became even smaller” Davide added. “Cleary, my objective was to climb up the ranking. This is what I did in heat A/B, when I recovered six positions. Unfortunately, in the other qualifying race, I had a collision at the start and I was forced to drive the whole race with a damaged front-wheel axle unit. Really frustrating!” Instead of recovering positions, Davide finished only 22nd before the first of the two
finals.
“There, I really did everything I could! I had worked a lot with the Maranello Team to find the right set-up for the Angerville track and our efforts were finally rewarded when I climbed up to 13th position”.
In the second final, the Italian champion went on with his catching up, using all his great experience to quickly recover positions in the group. “At the end of the race, the gap between me and the leaders was much smaller. I overtook several times and I would have certainly recovered a few more positions, if the race had been longer. Finally, after a difficult debut at this meeting, I finished the weekend with an eighth position, which I consider rather good. This allows me to score important points for the Championship”.
The cooperation between Maranello and Maxter finally showed its competitiveness at this European debut, because Davide was setting the same times as the pilots who reached the 2nd et 3rd steps of the podium. At the end of June at Mariembourg, on the circuit where Davide has often shown his formidable talent, he will do everything he can to obtain times more in line with his potential. “It is always better to start from the first rows of the grid, in order to avoid the collisions that are always more frequent at the centre of the group. Before the Belgian race, we will be holding a series of tests with the Maranello team and I believe they will be useful to quickly improve our 2008 results”. |
