A combined South African Rotax Max National season opener and the annual winner-takes-all wildcard African Open delivered epic karting at Cape Town’s Killarney Kart Track over the weekend. With over 125 entries including a strong continental contingent from as far afield as Mozambique and Namibia, the twisty Killarney dished up a whole lot of great racing on a cloudy Cape autumn’s weekend.

We can‘t believe that the week is actually over now, as today we crowned the champions of the 2022 Rotax MAX Challenge Grand Finals and there was simply incredible racing action out on track.

What a lovely sunny day in the mountains of Portimao at the Kartodromo Internacional Algarve. The sun was shining the whole day and gave us beautiful weather for the traditional Drivers picture before the pre-finals of the RMCGF 2022 started.

Today the Kartodromo Internacional Algarve welcomed us in the morning shrouded in fog what prompted a fifteen-minute delay to the start of our on-track action. But this did not lower the spirit of our racers.

Yesterday saw the first real part of the full-throttle action that is experienced by the whole paddock, as all 394 drivers would brave the changeable weather conditions that saw the final part of Non-Qualifying Practice and the first five of eight classes go out for Qualifying.

After very changeable conditions during yesterday’s first on track action with a hint of sunshine from time to time, all 394 competitors from the 60 nations represented here this week would head out onto the circuit to be challenged during the first set of Non-Qualifying Practices.

We look back at yesterday, when the 2022 RMC Grand Finals were truly opened via the Welcome Briefing in the morning. 394 drivers received their brand new karts through the customary raffle on the main start-finish straight underneath the beautifully sunlit Portuguese skyline. Along with that, drivers would also head to the nearby Autodromo Internacional do Algarve for the mandatory briefings that afternoon, with the paddock tent being a busy hive of activity all day long as the brand-new karts would be prepared fully, with every nut and bolt tightened and fastened.

After a very windy day yesterday, today the track greeted us with bright sunshine with no real breeze apparent. We take a short look back to yesterday, where Non-Qualifying practice started, and the first action took place under the floodlights and the night sky.

The South African Rotax Max Karting Challenge is raring to race once again following its second lockdown laps in two seasons. Club racing already re-starts this coming weekend before the various regional series picks up again through August and then a revised national calendar will resume in September.