There has been a media dog’s breakfast going on amongst the stenographers who aspire to be part of the F1 world. It seems that in Japan the 12 year old kart racer Sena Sakaguchi, who was Japanese junior kart champion last year, has broken his arm. I cannot find any confirmation of this at the moment, but there is not much point in anyone making up such a story. However, somehow or other, the story started circulating in Twitland that Bruno Senna had been injured. This resulted in Bruno telling the Twits that he was fine. The monkeys with typewriters in the “make believe media” then reported that all was well and that the injured person was actually Sakaguchi Sena, which was not very smart as Sena is the poor kid’s first name, not his surname. Sena and Bruno have actually met (some years ago) – and there is documentary evidence to prove it.
While I was unravelling this mess I stumbled upon the interesting development of Nicolas Todt’s ART (now called Lotus Grand Prix) expanding into the karting world. I knew that Todt was busy signing up youngsters, notably a rising Monaco driver called Charles Leclerc, who won last year’s KF3 World Cup, but I did not know the extent to which ART has got into karting. The organisation began to manufacture karts at the end of last year with a new department under Guillaume Capietto, the technical director of the GP2 and GP3 operations. ART Grand Prix (France) will field a team featuring Lucas Marchy and Charles Gregory Machado in KF3. There is also an official distributor and team for ART Grand Prix in Finland, plus another in Japan (which will be running the young Sakaguchi). The Japanese operation includes not only karts but also an ART-branded team in Formula Renault in Japan. ART will also have a kart operation in New Zealand and has done a deal with Zip Kart to be the official outfit for ART Grand Prix in the United Kingdom.
One wonders whether the decision to switch ART to Lotus branding will soon mean that there will be an outbreak of Lotus-branding in karts all over the world…
In the last few weeks Caterham has also revealed new ambitions in karting, with plans to organise a Caterham Motorsport-run karting championship in 2013, with Caterham’s own designed and developed kart. The aim is to give karting the benefit from the firm’s 26 years of experience in running low-cost one-make race championships.
The aim is to target the mass-market of parents and youngsters who would like to race in a competitive and yet affordable karting series which, until now, might have been an unachievable dream. Caterham says it is determined to make motorsport accessible to everyone
Caterham Motorsport has appointed 20-year old kart racer Laura Tillett to assist with development of the new karting championship.
source: © joesaward.wordpress.com
