First official time in a WSK meeting and first victory for the Kalì Kart colors. On the Lonato track Cristian Blandino expressed a clear superiority in the Mini category with his Mini Kalì Kart equipped with TM by Salemi engines. In the past we have rarely seen such a dominance that began with Pole Position in Qualifying Practice and continued with victory in all the three Heats, in the Prefinal and in the Final. Only the Mini Team took part in this first race of the season and Nikita Ljubimov also had an excellent weekend in Gr. 3, starting in the top ten in the Final and then finishing in P17 only, due to a race contact. In the Under 10 category, Pedro Gomez was unlucky and had an accident in the Pre-Final and was unable to take part in the race, while Ben Piscopo finished outside the top 15, due to a contact in the Final, but showed excellent performances above all in the Pre-Final.
4 DRIVERS TO RACE IN THE OK AND KZ CATEGORIES
On the eve of the first seasonal races, Kalì Kart has made 4 drivers official for the OK and KZ categories. In the direct-drive top class the team will focus on the pair made up of Peter Stiller and Stefano Pedani, respectively with German and Italian passports, who will also be joined in the first season race by Aleksandar Bogunovic, before the Slovenian driver moves on to the FIA European Championship in the KZ2 category. Since the beginning of the season, however, Simone Bianco has been announced in the Shifter category coming from the CRG ground, where he has been the protagonist of the OK category for the last 2 years.
KALì KART PRESENTS THE DRIVERS LINE UP FOR THE MINI CATEGORY
In the last few weeks, the Tinini Group has formalized the return of the Kalì Kart brand to racing with a Factory Racing Team that will take part in the main WSK events and FIA Karting races. The team has been called Kalì Kart Racing and will be involved in all categories, from Mini to KZ. The objective of the Racing team will be to contribute to the technical development of the chassis and accessories to transfer the racing know-how to series production, but also to promote the brand at an international level thus offering marketing support to the network of sale. In recent days the marketing management of CRG, which follows the development and management of the team, has made 8 drivers official for the 2024 season. The first names to be released were those of the drivers involved in the MINI category, which will be central to the activities of the brands. The first important name concerns the arrival from CRG of Cristian Blandino, who will be joined by the Maltese driver Ben Piscopo, also already involved with CRG colors in 2023 and by the Brazilian Pedro Campos, protagonist of the MINI classes in his country and at the first experiences in Europe. The team will be completed by Nikita Ljubimov, who stood out in the 2023 Rotax Finals, where he finished the meeting in P2.
CRG INTENSIFIES ACTIVITIES TO SUPPORT THE KALÌ KART BRAND
In 2024 CRG will continue a process of repositioning the Kalì Kart brand in the International and National karting panorama. In the last two years, the collaboration with Jorge Pescador was launched for the Spanish market and the international races of the X30 Series, increasing commercial and sporting activities also in many other European and Asian countries. In the wake of this constant growth in terms of market, CRG management has decided to further support Kalì Kart activities also from a communication point of view with a brand-new official website (www.kalikart.it), which will be launched and will go online in January. At the same time, two dedicated social media channels have been opened (Facebook and Instagram), which will have a very original editorial line to involve the community of all karting enthusiasts in a direct and unconventional way. An official Kalì Kart racing team will also support these communication activities, which will help to promote the brand with structures and drivers involved in the main categories, from MINI to KZ. It is worth saying that Kalì Kart is the brand from which CRG itself was born in the mid-80s and boasts a list of 10 world titles and 12 European ones, as well as having had drivers of the caliber of Michael Schumacher, Alex Zanardi and Mike Wilson among its ranks.
This is how Giancarlo Tinini has commented on the initiatives undertaken to support the Kalì Kart brand: “The range of Kalì Kart chassis has contributed to writing the history of karting and best interprets our winning tradition in this sport, as well as our vision of the future, of innovation, quality and service. We have instructed our marketing team to enhance the communication related to this brand to give it its own identity, compared to the CRG range, with the aim of providing our resellers and external teams with more personalized support, but also to revive a part of our history and tell it to the new generations with a modern and direct language. Our plans for 2024 also include the setting up of a dedicated racing team, which will contribute to promoting the brand from a sporting point of view, actively collaborating with our dealers and teams associated to the brand from a technical perspective”.