January 24, 2008

Florida Winter Tour - Homestead

With temperatures in the teens back home in Indiana, the Evolution Karting drivers and crew loved the sun and heat of south Florida and they raced their CRGs and Top Karts onto the podium twice, and lead races in other classes only to have mechanical problems and crashes stop them short in those classes, but the team was happy with their speed and competitiveness overall.

Kurt Mathewson lead the team on his CRG with podium finishes both days in Masters Shifter with a very close second on Saturday, and a third place finish on Sunday. Mathewson, the reigning Great Lakes Pro Tour Master’s division champion, last raced the Florida Winter Tour in 2006 and notched 4 wins out of 6 events to finish second in the series.

New team driver A.J. Codalata, showed great speed in the Spec Racer class on his Grand Products sponsored Top-Kart chassis qualifying second in the tough class on Saturday and leading the Pre-Final for much of the race before finishing second. In the Final on Saturday, an electrical problem put him out of the race on lap one. Sunday A.J. qualified a respectable 6th in the rain, then moved up to second place in the Pre-Final before breaking a chain 3 laps from the end to finish 22nd. In the Sunday Final, starting deep in the field A.J. showed both speed and patience while carving his way up to an 8th finish, while setting the second fastest race lap.

Evolution Karting’s other new team member was highly respected Pro Shifter driver Keith Spicer. Evolution teamed with DL Racing to field and support Spicer on the CRG chassis which he drove for the first time on Thursday. While working to get the setup he liked, Keith qualified for the Saturday event in 8th place in the premier class at the event. In the pre-final he moved up 2 spots to finish 6th, and another 2 spots to finish a very respectable 4th place in the Final on Saturday. Qualifying 15th in the rain on Sunday, Keith quickly picked up several spots and finished 9th in the Pre-Final.

In the Sunday Final, Keith moved forward with determination moving from 9th to 5th by lap 6. A strong move to the inside by Spicer was countered by an equally defensive move by 4th place Jordy Vorrath leading to contact and both going off course. Vorrath couldn’t continue and tried to stop Spicer from restarting by yanking his spark plug wire out of the boot! Undaunted Spicer got going and recovered from 22nd to finish 14th.

Evolution Karting will have the same driver line-up on the Top-Kart and CRG chassis at the next round of the Florida Winter Tour at Moroso Motorsports Park February 15-17.

For more information contact kurtM@evolution-karting.com

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