Date - 8/3/2010
Description - The Oman Karting Team (OKT) reached the podium again this weekend in the eighth round of an increasingly competitive Junior Rotax Max Challenge in the UAE. The team, officially launched at the start of the year, came second and third behind current series champion Edward Jones. Jones led the Oman Karting Team’s Sanad and Abdullah al Rawahi at an astonishing pace throughout the race.
According to post-race reports Sanad dug in but couldn’t quite hold onto the back of Jones who eased away and took victory by six seconds with Sanad al Rawahi taking his best ever finish in second position and brother Abdullah equaling his best-ever finish in third place. Suleiman, team’s manager and father of the duo, attributed the accomplishment to hard practice and two days of technical training from British karting expert Kieran Crawley.
Crawley is the founder of M-Sport, one of Britain’s leading kart teams, and worked with the Formula One champion Lewis Hamilton before he was racing professionally as he made his way up through the karting levels. Crawley spent the few days leading up to the crucial match in a training workshop with the Karting Team which Suleiman al Rawahi credits with some of the drivers’ success.
“It was very useful for the team to learn from Kieran Crawley’s extensive technical karting experience. The drivers showed definite improvement in their driving skills following their time with him.” Sanad and Abdullah expressed similar sentiments. Both drivers have made it clear that their ultimate goal is to move from karting to Formula racing, and both were inspired by Crawley’s history of working with Hamilton when he first started out in karting.
Fourteen-year-old Abdullah commented: “It is definitely encouraging for us to work with Kieran who has seen firsthand how someone like Lewis Hamilton can move from racing karts to formula 1 cars at a relatively young age.” Suleiman, who has devised a three-year plan for the drivers based on their ambitions to use karting as a platform for other forms of competitive motorsport, revealed that the team will work with Crawley again in the upcoming two races at the end of this month and also this summer during training in the UK.
For further information on the progress of the Oman Karting Team visit: www.omankartingteam.com and www.alainraceway.com/kart-club.aspx
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