First race of this 2025.
We started the year with important changes within the team, moving from CRG chassis to Birel ART chassis, so in this first race we have tried to know how we can set up the kart, so that we can fight throughout the year.
First of all, the tests were complicated, as the weather conditions were very changeable and we were not able to test a lot of things. Then on the race weekend, with the weather being more relaxed, we were able to start to run different set-ups to see what the results would be.
It was a difficult weekend, because neither in KZ nor in Senior we could find the best setups. In fact, Saturday's qualifying is a great proof of that: in KZ we qualified P13 out of 15 and in Senior P15 out of 17.
We were working hard for the rest of Saturday, as well as in the evening to try to understand a bit better what we were doing wrong and how to find the solution. And for the Warm Up on Sunday we found the key. We decided to try something completely opposite to what we were doing, looking for a performance jump, and we did. So, we found the way we had to keep working.
In the races we were not very lucky: in KZ our race ended at the start, where we lost 50s to the leading drivers, but we decided to keep riding to test all the changes, and we managed to improve the times of the weekend by 3 tenths of a second. In Senior, we managed to make a great comeback from P15 to P5 in the race, with a stable progression and without wearing the tyres.
The cross of the coin was for the Pre-Mini category: after the whole weekend leading all the classifications (Q, WUP, H1 and SH), we arrived at the race and the clear inexperience of our driver (it was his first race) was evident in the melee. In the end he finished P6, but we still leave knowing that we did a great job and what things we have to improve to be able to fight for the championship this year.
So, we can say that we are relatively happy with this first weekend of the year. Now it's on to the Winter Cup in two weeks' time.
