Dutch Driver De Vries Karting World Champion

KARTSPORT NEW ZEALAND
Media information
For immediate release

2010 CIK-FIA Karting World Championship
Zuera
Spain
Sunday
September 19
2010

20-09-10

PRESS RELEASE

DUTCH DRIVER DE VRIES IS LATEST KARTING WORLD CHAMPION

Dutch driver Nyck De Vries is the latest Karting World Champion, the diminutive 15-year-old beating 18-year-old British driver Jordan Chamberlain and 17-year-old Dane Nikolaj Moller-Madsen to the 2010 title in Spain on Sunday.

Going into Sunday's event Final, last year's KF2 European Champion Chamberlain was the favourite. But although he led for most of the race De Vries was in front when it counted - when the chequered flag came out.

"I was closing only very slowly on Jordan," he told reporters at the press conference after the race, "then at the start of the last lap I said to myself that this braking manoeuvre would probably be my very last chance to be world champion. I decided to make my move some way back...and that was how it went."

In winning the 2010 World title De Vries joins a select bunch of karters which includes New Zealand's own Wade Cunningham, title holder in 2003, and a number of current and former Formula 1 drivers including Italians Vitantonio Liuzzi, Jarno Trulli and Jan Magnussen.

These days success in karts is a prerequisite for any young driver keen to work his way up through the car ranks, the reason why both the McLaren and Ferrari Formula 1 teams have created their own driver development programmes for promising karters.

De Vries, not surprisingly, is a member of the McLaren squad while the driver who finished seventh in Sunday, Brandon Maisano, is a member of the Ferrari one.

Both teams will be hoping their proteges can produce the same form as 2008 Formula 1 World Champion, Lewis Hamilton.

Hamilton started racing karts at the age of six, was signed by McLaren's Ron Dennis at the age of 13 and after winning British and European titles in karts, blazed a winning trail through the British Formula Renault, Formula Three Euroseries and GP2 championships before finishing second (by just one point) in the 2007 World Formula 1 Championship then winning it outright in 2008.

ENDS

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