Harry Hurst – First Place in 2024/25 NATSKA Championship

We’ve only gone and done it!

Harry takes the chequered flag as the new NATSKA 2024/2025 Junior Rotax champion, also finishing the sprint weekend in Cumbria in 3rd Place.

An outstanding weekend’s racing and the final season result. 

With 14 rounds in the championship, it’s been as usual a long year of racing with a lot of highs and some extreme lows. This year’s National finals took us to Rowrah, Cumbria’s Kart circuit and for this year the weather was absolutely roasting topping the temperature gauge in the 30’s whilst stuck in the quarry which felt like an oven with no breeze but cannot complain as we have lost 2 tents here in the past with the force 10 gales that hit the track over past weekends.

This is one of our favourite tracks in the country, just a shame it is so far away at 6 hours otherwise we would race here more often. We decided to miss the practice day on the Friday as we were quite confident with set up and how to handle the track, and it turned out all was good in the end.

With 30 drivers on the grid, we got enough info on the days track conditions in practice to hit the ground running in heat 1.

Harry started the finals in second place in the championship behind the leader by 12 points and the top 5 were all close behind so we thought the day was going to be very tight with results.

This weekend's racing was going to consist of 6 heats over the 2 days with 1 drop down round so the total from 5 heats points would count.

Saturday Racing

• Heat 1 – Starting 18th on the grid had a great first heat to make up 9 places to finish in P9 with the leader of the championship finishing in p1 from a p5 start.
• Heat 2 – Starting 13th on the grid he had another great race keeping it consistent and finishing in P7 with the leader finishing in p12 from a p26 start.
• Heat 3 – Starting in 28th place had his best round by far taking advantage of a lot of mistakes and making up a stonking 19 places to finish the heat in P9 whist the leader had to retire with a carry over penalty which meant he finished in last place and made the race to the title down to the wire and the next heat would give harry a massive advantage.
• Heat 4 – Starting in 3rd place harry kept his nerve and kept a clean race off the line staying behind the leader from start line to finish line to finish the heat in P2 with the leader having to retire from the heat so it was game on and harry shot into the lead in the championship with only 2 heats to go on the Sunday.

Sunday Racing

Another roasting hot day keeping the set up the same as on the Saturday turned out to be spot on. All Harry would have to do to win the championship was drive 2 clean heats not getting any penalties and just finish both. 

• Heat 5 – Starting 22nd on the grid with my heart trying to exit my chest the lights went out and harry shot off making up 9 places to finish in 13th place.
• Heat 6 – Starting in 9th place drove a solid clean heat making up 3 places to finish the heat in 6th place and so securing the championship win.

This also meant he finished the weekends sprint race in P3 so an absolutely superb weekends racing in sunny Cumbria.

“So proud of the way he has handled himself in this year’s championship from the slow start of the season we had, and some poor first round results that didn’t go our way with bad luck. All against some great drivers all of whom had one thing in mind as well – TO WIN!

Onwards and upwards now to the start of our next season in September and to carry on getting signatures for our inter club championship license.” Nigel Hurst