Emerson Harvey fights back in final narrowly missing a podium finish

Race of Stars on the Gold Coast. A huge crowd came to the Extreme Kart Centre on the Gold Coast to see the best of the best invited from all over the Australia & quite a few top international drivers as well.

This meeting Emerson took up an offer by Ricciardo Karts Australia to race for their junior team, which was a great opportunity to drive for a professional team and get an understanding of how it all works. Emerson also got to meet and learn from top international driver Marijn Kremers who races in KZ2.

Practice Emerson went straight to P1 in the first practice showing great versatility having only driven the kart once before, P2 and we were in the top 5 which was an awesome result.

Qualifying We made the wrong gearing choice for qualifying which really hurt our straight line speed, 10th was the best Emerson could manage - not fantastic given our practice pace, however, we had something to work with.

Heats 1 & 2 Emerson finished both heats in 8th, which was ok, as he hadn’t spent much time in the kart and the team were tuning on the run.  We were very confident we would have a fast kart for the final.

Final The first lap was one to forget for Emerson as he dropped 4 spots to 12th but to his credit he didn’t panic. One by one he started to claw the leaders back and was clearly the fastest kart on the track. With 4 laps to go the Shannon’s backed driver was in 4th and looking to make his move. A bit of rubbing in the pack saw the 2 leaders get away.  Emerson tried a move on the final corner getting a bump on the way through which saw him miss out on 3rd by.005. Overall a great drive to fight back and narrowly missing a podium.

Michael Patrizi said, “ We are very happy with Emerson’s performance at the Race of Stars in the KA12 class. All day he was a front-runner and in the final drove a super race just missing a well-deserved podium. Emerson showed us why he is one of Australia’s top, up and coming young drivers. We will try our hardest to have Emo in a Ricciardo kart for next season.”

Connect with Emerson on the Shannons Club at: club.shannons.com.au/club/enthusiasts/Emerson76/garage/