Monster spin!
By TMX Archives on 4th Aug 10
All of Monster Energy's contracted riders took to the indoor kart arena adjacent to the Lommel MX facility last Friday... with Finn Harri Kullas emerging the winner!
The Gariboldi Yamaha teenager was none too chuffed at first when the grid was reversed after he had lapped a second faster than anyone else during qualification.
However, he dominated the race as well, powering through to take the lead within five-minutes and remained unruffled after a block-pass by Alessandro Lupino temporarily put him back to fourth. He retook the lead in the closing minutes from Evgeny Bobryshev, CAS Honda's Russian who had also surged through the pack from near the back of the grid.
Not quite as fast, but infinitely more entertaining, was the ‘heavyweight' division of the press races.
Given a kart which was seven-km/h down on the rest ‘Hodge' didn't win, but was surrounded by his colleagues at the finish, having ‘upset' every single one of them at some stage of the race – at least four claimed that his ‘tactics' had cost them the win.
The GP mechanics who had stayed to watch were satisfied that ‘our man' had followed pre-race instructions, even upstaging Schumacher for planting certain rivals in the tyres.
A virgin to karting, ‘Hodge' himself was a little miffed at the handling characteristics of his vehicle: "The rubber skirts are a pain – they kept locking the wheels and killing the motor in a four-wheel drift!”