Bray Has Good Build-up For Key Kz2 Event In France This Week

KARTSPORT NEW ZEALAND
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*  2013 CIK-FIA International KZ2 Super Cup
Varennes sur Ailler
France
Sept 20-22
2013

20-09-13

ROUND PREVIEW

Bray Has Good Build-up For Key Kz2 Event In France This Weekend

Kiwi karter Daniel Bray has had a good build-up for his biggest international meeting to date this year, this weekend's CIK-FIA International KZ2 Super Cup event in France. 

At his last international event - the SuperKart USA Summernationals meeting at Springs Junction in Colorado in July - he claimed a win and a third place, while at the latest round of the Italian Karting Championship at South Garda last weekend the 26-year-old works GP Karts driver from Auckland claimed a fifth place finish in the second Final.

"Yes," Bray said from the venue of this weekend's  Super Cup meeting, the Circuit Jean Brun at Varennes sur Ailler in central France. "I started 19th in the first Final and got up to seventh before being run over and smashing the radiator which put me back to 10th but in the second I had a strong race and was able to work my way up from 10th to fifth."

Bray left New Zealand at the beginning of the month and tested at the Varennes sur Ailler circuit a fortnight ago.

"The track," he says, "is super-fast, like a small road race circuit, so it will be a matter of qualifying well and responding to the way the track surface changes with all the rubber that's going to go down."

This weekend's meeting is the first in which a 2013 World Karting title will be decided, in this case in the headlining KZ class, with Bray's sparring partner from last year's World Cup for KZ2 meeting in Italy, Max Verstappen from The Netherlands, the odds-on favourite to take the title in the premier KZ class.

In Bray's class, KZ2, the two key protagonists are expected to be the winner of the class at the first round of the 2013 European championship at Wackersdorf in Germany, Italian Riccardo Negri, and the winner of the second round at Genk in Belgium, Norwegian Emil Antonsen.

Bray was quick but unlucky at the round in Germany in May, topping the time sheets in two of his free practices before qualifying 12th and finishing third in his first heat race.

That was as good as it was going to get however, with a motor blowing in the second heat, a fourth in the third then two more dnfs (thanks to a broken shifter linkage while lying third in the fourth heat and being taken out of the fifth with just two laps to go while in second place) before another third place finish in the final heat.

That gave Bray P19 on the grid for the Pre-Final in which he got as high as ninth before being hit, turned around then driven over by another driver causing too much damage to his kart to continue.

Luck also deserted the reigning New Zealand Open class and 2011 SuperKarts USA S1 class title holder at the second round of the European championships at Genk in Belgium in June, a tangle while challenging for second place in his Pre-Final seeing his campaign cur short again before the Finals.

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