Summarize

A small party of South African karters descended on Maputo for karting adventure with a difference over the weekend, but it was Mini Max master Ghazi Motlekar who came home happiest of all following a stellar weekend behind the wheel. Dainfern, Johannesburg lad Motlekar crossed the line first in all three races and while he lost the first win to a penalty, he fought back hard to win race 2 before dominating the final, only to miss out on the overall win by a single point.

“We went to Mozambique to learn this weekend — like we did to Cape Town last month — and we won again!” Ghazi explained. “It took a little time to learn the Maputo track and get my kart’s set-up right, so qualifying was not as good as we would have liked, but I made a good start and I was into second by lap 2 and took the lead on lap 5, before going on to win with a new lap record.

“Unfortunately my start was a bit too good — I crossed the tram lines that designate our starting lanes too early and was given a ten-second penalty, so ended up fifth and that’s where I started Race 2. “Once again, I was up to second by the end of the first lap and then had a great dice, first with Nathan Shana for second and then with Jason Macbeath for the lead and I managed to break the lap record again on my way to take the win by a couple of tenths of a second.

“The final race was awesome — I led from lights to flag on my way to a 3.5 second win, but that was just not enough to take the overall victory “Still, it was a great weekend of racing — congratulations to Jason on his overall win and thanks to my team — especially uncle Hughie Orr, who fell and broke his arm but still made a plan to engineer a winning kart for me through the weekend. “That was a great end to the 2019 season — now we really cannot wait for next year!”