Rubens Barrichello wins International Challenge of Kart Champs in Brazil
Another win for Rubens Barrichello in an off-season kart race as he triumphed in Felipe Massa’s International Challenge of Kart Champs at Florianopolis.
Barrichello narrowly won the event from Lucas di Grassi, who is bidding to take Barrichello’s place at Honda in 2009.
The event was split across two races and Barrichello won the first and finished fifth in the other race to score 36 points. Di Grassi made a late pass on Xandhi Negrao in the second race to take third, but that left him one point shy of Barrichello’s total.
Massa, meanwhile, found himself in a similar situation to the F1 championship-decider at Interlagos. He won the second race after a back-and-forth duel with former IRL racer Felipe Giaffone but the championship was decided by where his rivals finished behind him. Barrichello’s fifth place was enough to grab the overall win.
Massa was third on 31 points ahead of di Grassi (26) and Negro (21).
Massa won the event, which he runs, in 2006. Michael Schumacher returned to defend his 2007 crown but retired in the second race with a broken kart.
Past F1 racers involved in the event included Tarso Marques, Roberto Moreno, Ricardo Zonta, Vitantonio Liuzzi, Luciano Burti and Luca Badoer.
Barrichello’s victory comes two weeks after his team won the 500 Milhas de Kart Granja Viana.
Great for Rubens! It would be interesting to read about what Schumacher had to say in regards to Barrichello’s comments:)
Was there any wheel to wheel with Schumacher in race 1?
Schumacher was broken karted
Rubens for Honda 2009!
yeah was good, schumi was p4 with rubens in front, schumi got the drop on him but not long after he hit an apex hard and got sideways and rubens hit his front end and smashed up his bodywork. schumi finished 4th or 5th i think with massa behind him, rubens killed it – he had heaps of pace.
in the last race from early on you could see schumi’s exhaust hanging off the back of the kart, lots of dueling up front between massa and digrassi i think it was, very close all they way through, a few position changes. was a real good race weekend to watch
Any youtube videos on this or Rotax Max grand final or the Asian Pacific KF1 race?
Hi, here´s a video from the race.
Look how Schumi makes a mistake, and Rubens kick him out of the track! (min 28:20)
http://es.youtube.com/watch?v=rKKgK6QCupA