After a long month-and-a-half hiatus from running at home, we finally made a return to Norway Motorsports Park for their 9th club race in the 2025 season. Having missed a handful of mid-season races due to other events on my schedule, I was now sitting third in the Ignite Senior point standings, needing a good result to stay in the championship fight.
The morning started out as a bit of a scramble to reset the kart for Norway after running in Iowa a few weeks prior, as well as addressing a couple of issues that needed to be resolved. The first, which I actually discovered at Iowa, was a slightly bent axle from the 2-to-go incident at Quincy. The second thing was the chain, which was getting old and dirty and was far overdue for a replacement.
Long story short, the axle change took much longer than expected, and chain breaker issues while installing the new chain pushed me back even further, which was far enough to miss first practice. I did, however, make it out to second practice with minutes to spare, and with all those issues resolved I was able to hit the ground running and set the fastest time of the session. I followed that up in qualifying by scoring pole by about 3 tenths over second place.
Now came the heat race, starting on pole with James Recendez alongside and Jeremy Colley right behind me. Thinking back to the start of the season and the aggression level I saw in those races, I expected to be playing 8 laps of defense again. Remembering that three-tenth gap in qualifying, though, I took a gamble and decided to try not defending and putting in hot laps to run away from the pack. Despite my doubts, it actually worked like a dream, and I ended up winning the 8-lap heat by over three seconds.
Now on pole for the final, the pressure was on to follow up that performance from the heat. As the field of 6 seniors took the green for the final, I maintained the lead through the first few turns, building a healthy gap to Recendez and Colley behind. As the race went on, I never looked back and continued to stretch out that lead bit by bit with each lap. After 12 laps of racing that lead would stretch to about two and a half seconds, and I would cross the line to pick up my third win and my second grand slam of the 2025 season.
This was probably the most meaningful win I’ve had so far this season, since it was redemption for all the bad luck at my other races, and I had finally beat James Recendez in a straight up fight for the first time this season. I think having some seat time at the regional Ignite events to get me some more experience made me a much better driver coming back to Norway. I felt more comfortable, more consistent, and smarter with decision making than before. On top of that, Jim Perry and the people at CKT Racing have been constantly feeding me advice on driving and setups, which also played a big role in my result this race.
Because of the events I missed I still only sit tied for second in points, but still well in the championship fight. There are now only three races left on the 2025 Norway club racing schedule, and with Thor’s Throwdown on my schedule in September, I’ve only got two races left to fight for the championship, and it’s all coming down to the wire.