The 2025 Norway Motorsports Park Ignite Season is continuing to heat up with Race #2 officially in the books. Sunny skies and warm weather brought much bigger crowds than the week prior, featuring 14 drivers in the Ignite Senior Class. Coming in as the points leader, I had all the pressure on me to defend my Grand Slam the week prior and get back on the top step.
I immediately hit the ground running in practice, knocking half a second off my best time from the entire weekend prior, without even making it to qualifying yet. However, it was a similar story for everyone else, the top 7 being separated by less than a second. Norway Ignite veteran James Recendez flexed his muscles in qualifying, taking the pole by just a couple tenths, with the rest of the pack sitting close behind.
Rolling off second for the heat race, I was able to slot in behind Recendez and open up a small gap from the rest of the pack. The two of us were nearly matched on pace, all coming down to who was the bravest and the most consistent. With a couple laps to go in the heat, I was able to take the lead away from Recendez and hang on to it, bringing home the win in the heat race and the pole position for the feature race.
Then came what ended up being one of the biggest thrills of an Ignite race that Norway had ever seen. I was starting on pole, but lost the lead in turn 1 to Recendez sending it around the outside of turns 1 and 2. We began to settle into the race, but unlike in the heat, three drivers behind us had latched onto the train, making it a 5-horse race. By the halfway point, the top 5 were all within a second of each other. Shortly after I briefly took the lead of the race from Recendez but then gave it back a couple laps later. With just a couple laps to go, heading down the backstretch, I made an inside move for the lead on Recendez heading to the Monza. Recendez once again didn’t let up, going two-wide with me through the fastest part of the track like a scene out of Talladega Nights. Thanks to his bravery, Recendez had the inside line going into the next corner to take the lead back, with Louis Palmisano following through to take second and drop me to third. By the time I had recovered it was too late, and the door for a pass never opened back up. James Recendez went on to win the feature race followed by Louis Palmisano and myself, with Mike Stephenson and Declan Conklin rounding out the top 5. The total time delta from first to fifth at the line–just 0.746 seconds.
Sometimes I like to call 206 racing a 50mph game of chess. You have to use your kart and the people around you as pawns in your game to win the race, and it’s all about being in the right place at the right time. Make one wrong move, and everyone else puts you in checkmate. Even though I didn’t win, that was one of the most fun races I had ever been apart of in Ignite, and it was a real test of skill and race craft. We all raced each other hard, but respectfully, and we put on a show I wish I could have seen from the outside. Amidst all of that, I still managed to maintain a healthy championship lead, and a bronze medal to go in the trophy case.