TDT | Manama
Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com
Bahrain International Circuit (BIC), the “home of motorsport in the Middle East”, crowned the 2023 Sakhir Rotax MAX Challenge (SRMC) champion over the weekend.
Julian Rivera, Nasser Nas, Luka Houghton, Oliver Kruglov, Cain Talasabil Cherian and F1 legend Rubens Barrichello all won coveted titles in their respective competitive categories.
They were crowned after the final two rounds of this year’s SRMC campaign, held back-to-back at the Bahrain International Karting Circuit (BIKC), BIC’s world-class grassroots motorsport facility in Sakhir, last Friday and Saturday. was confirmed.
Julien is the new champion of the Micro MAX class, with Nasser taking the title in Mini MAX. Luka took home the first place trophy in the Junior MAX category, while Kruglov was first among the Senior MAX runners.
Cherian won the DD2 MAX class and Barrichello rounded out SRMC’s latest champion in the DD2 MAX Masters category.
With the completion of the SRMC, the stage is now set for the Bahrain Rotax MAX Challenge (BRMC) 2023/2024, which will be held over eight rounds until March next year.
Similar to SRMC, BRMC is for individual racers who use Rotax-powered karts to compete against each other in sprint races.
Participants interested in participating in this championship should contact BIKC (+973-1745-1745) as soon as possible.
The first round of BRMC is scheduled to be held on December 15th.
In SRMC’s Micro MAX title match, Julián Rivera finished his four-round campaign with 124 points to take home the crown.
He was followed by Rayan Najjar with 107 points and Patrikas Jokius with 64 points.
Julien won the fourth and final round to take second place in the penultimate meeting of the weekend and earn enough points for first place overall in the championship standings.
Rayan placed third in both competitions, while Patrikas won the third round and finished behind Julien in the finale.
In the Mini MAX class, Nasser Nas won the title with 100 points, defeating Sheikh Ahmed bin Saqer Al Khalifa by just 5 points.
Shaheen Shaheen took third place with 73 points.
Masus Maginas and Majus Maginas were the winners of the last two rounds of SRMC last weekend. Masuth held off Nasser and Sheikh Ahmed to take the checkered flag in the third round.
In the fourth round, Majus took victory, with Shaikh Ahmed in second and Adrian Thions rounding out the podium in third.
In the Junior MAX division, Luca Horton won the title with 129 points.
Tai Mejia was second with 103 and Vedant Menon was third with 73.
Luca completed a sensational campaign, finishing on the podium in all four rounds of Pre-Finals and Finals, with wins from Rounds 2 to 4.
Two wins in the last two meetings gave him a comfortable cushion at the top of the final rankings.
Wian Boshoff and Gracie Grantham joined Luka in the third race, while Vedant took second and Eason Tseng third in the fourth race.
Oliver Kruglov narrowly won the Senior MAX title.
He finished with 90 points, just one point ahead of Mohamed Alhassan in the championship race. Fahad Al-Mukra took third place with 77 points.
Kruglov was classified as second in the final SRMC race, which was enough to take the crown at the checkered flag.
He won all of the weekend’s events, finishing behind Alhassan, who won both rounds of pre-finals and finals.
In the third race, Najaci Rushdan and Almukula took second and third place, while in the fourth race Francisco Daniel Altamirano joined Alhassan and Kruglov on the podium.
In the MAX DD2 class, Kane Tarasail Cherian finished alongside Sen de Luwe with 70 points.
Henris Grube took third place with 58 points.
Cherian won the final two rounds of the weekend to claim the title. Grube was second and Mikolas Maginas third in both meetings over the weekend.
At the MAX DD2 Masters, Rubens Barrichello did well enough to win the title with a double in the first and second rounds, finishing with 70 points.
Anthony Hogg was second with 49 points.
At the end of both meetings, awards ceremonies were held with the presentation of the 2023 SRMC Champions. Officials from BIC, BIKC and Bahrain Automobile Federation attended the award ceremony and presented the winners with their respective trophies.