Alfred A. Farrugia

The young karting driver Gianluca Dingli had his baptism of fire at the international karting circuit in Sarno, Naples, with mixed results.

Gianluca started making progress at every qualifying heat on Saturday, moving from 14th to 12th and then 9th in the third heat. The best lap was recorded in the very first heat at 1 minute 9.820 secs.

In yesterday’s 12 lap pre-final race, Gianluca started very well moving from 14th position on the starting grid to 8th place in the very first lap, where he remained until lap 5 when he registered his best time of the day at 1 minute 9.887 secs, 0.06 secs slower than the best time registered in the first heat.

The majority of the drivers were clocking better times by this stage and by lap 7 he dropped back to 10th place. It is not clear what happened in lap 8, because Gianluca is only credited with 7 laps and the 12th position, for which he earned 23 points in the Italian championship for this series in his class.

For some reason Gianluca did not finish the first lap of the 15-lap final race, which is a major disappointment for him. At time of going to print it was not known why his participation in the final was so short-lived. But this experience among very competitive Italian karting racers will serve the young Maltese driver well for the future, in spite of such an initial setback.