The Champions of the Future series held at Portimao was the perfect time to hold a final rehearsal in optimal conditions before the FIA Karting World Championship in the OK and OK-Junior categories. This was on the minds of all the drivers, who gathered a lot of information in preparation for the biggest event of the season. In terms of results, Polish driver Timoteusz Kucharczyk proved to be the top representative of the official Birel ART Racing team.

The Contest on CRG social channels (Facebook and Instagram) to elect the best CRG driver from 2000 to today (the last 20 years) has been very successful. In the end, however, the verdict was unequivocal: Max Verstappen is considered the strongest and most loved driver. The Dutchman scored 983 points and prevailed both in the votes obtained by Facebook and on Instagram. It should be remembered that Verstappen was recently elected by the sector press as the strongest Kart driver of the last 10 years and this further recognition underlines once again how strong and complete he is considered. Behind him, Paolo De Conto ranked with 764 points, a true recent icon of karting, a driver who has given the CRG brand dozens of international successes and who has only retired from racing earlier this season. Lewis Hamilton climbed the 3rd step of the podium, perhaps the most popular F1 driver that CRG has launched at the top of Motorsport. In the top 5 also Jonathan Thonon, 4th with 686 points and still firmly in the memory of Karting enthusiasts, while in 5th place was Robert Kubica (522 points), for which his fan club also moved en masse in the voting by sharing the Contest on their social pages.

Robert Kubica has revealed his rivals accused him of doping when he won karting championships in Italy early in his career. Kubica has always been considered one of the top talents of his generation along with the likes of Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel, who have 10 Formula 1 titles between them. Unfortunately, his rally crash in 2011 meant Kubica never reached the heights most expected him to, but when he was starting to show his potential as a teenager, others were sceptical.

At the end of September 2018, a race called the “20,000 Revs per minute” reserved for karts with bodywork, powered by 100 cc air-cooled engines from the period 1986 to 2003, took place at Le Mans as a curtain raiser to the famous 24 Heures Karting. The aim was to test the formula and it has to be said that for a premier it couldn’t have been a bigger success!