Max Karhan achieved his dream of taking part of the race at Třinec as a driver in the OK class, which is another key step for his future career.
Max said: “If you want to be good at races and continue to advance, it’s important to race with the best.”
Thanks to my partners, without whom this wouldn’t be possible, we achieved this.
Max had an opportunity to start as the wild card in this championship and take part in one of the four European championship races, at Třinec’s Steel Ring specifically.
The competition was extremely strong, which was key to Max to gain more experiences in a new category, which he races this season. 204 drivers from 60 nations all over the world took part in this race. These drivers represented three categories, including the biggest and most successful teams in junior F1. The total number of participants in this race was around 1000 people including coaches, mechanics and team members.
Max came to the Steel Ring with his mechanic Jan on Tuesday afternoon. From Wednesday morning he started to prepare his equipment, including a new chassis, which was necessary after the previous race.
In addition, it was necessary to get the prescribed petrol and both dry and wet tyres from the organiser. Then they had to go through technical and administrative checks.
Thursday
On Thursday Max took part in free practices for his category. Thanks to the nice weather he had the opportunity to test the dry and wet chassis and he also managed to run the engines prepared for him by the Machac family engineers.
For Max, the gap to the fastest driver was acceptable, but still too big. Throughout the practices, some problems have arisen – once, his engine stopped working and he complained about problems with the brakes. On the other hand, the chassis worked great.
In the end, the chassis and the engines were ready on Thursday evening so that Max could fight in the race on Friday.
Friday
On Friday, two more practices were held, after which a timed practice began. In this practice, Max managed to reach the 21. fastest time and was put into the gorup E. On Friday, another first Heat E+F was held, where Max finished 16th.
Saturday
Saturday started with a morning Warm up and continued with four heats. Max finished 22. in the D+E, B+E and C+F and 16th in A+E heat.
After counting the points Max achieved the 65th place.
Sunday
Sunday also started with a morning warm up and continued with a prefinal race. Sadly, the engine died again and three laps before the end the kart stopped…
After the races, Max said: “I’ve gained a lot of experiences racing with the fastest competitors on the planet. The opportunity to race itself is a great achievement for me. I would like to thank my mechanics and partners for their support, I greatly appreciate it.”