PIKC 2015

PIKC logo

Last weekend the PIKC (Polish Indoor Karting Championship) 2015 took place in Szczecin, Poland. For many, the Polish KWC-qualifier, is the greatest in terms of occupation. The organisation takes great effort in not only having the best Polish drivers on the line up, but also the top drivers from foreign countries. Again this year, this was a great success!

Place of the event; Silver Hotel & Gokart Center (Szczecin, Polen).

The first drivers arrived already on Wednesday for the first training sessions. On Friday, the official training day took place which was almost completely booked.

For the junior class, separate races were organised, the remaining classes (senior, master and women) drove at the same time. So there subrankings were used. For the best Polish driver there was also a separate price, which caused another competition in the competition.

The 100 available entries for the general class were sold out quite rapidly. Last minute, two people canceled so for the first race day on Saturday, 98 drivers lined up on the starting grid.

The races were very close and specially the non-Polish drivers got noticed in the front. The race direction was very strict and gave lots of penalties – which was sadly not very clear from time to time for some drivers.

PIKC 2015 – final drivers

After 5 races, the top 36 got divided in 3 semi-final races of 12 drivers. After this only the 10 fastest drivers pushed trough to the final.

The Belgian driver Mathias Grooten seemed to be the fastest the whole weekend and also took the pole position in the final. Before the German Sebastian Papke, the Belgian Matts Breckpot and the Dutchman Ruben Boutens.
In the prognosis, many people expected these to be the favourites in the championship.

In the start of the final a doubtful overtaking manoeuvre happened in which Grooten got stuck in the tires. With this he lost his winning chances for the championship. Papke took over the lead, while Boutens got passed Breckpot.

In the end, the difference in points was very small. The Dutchman Ruben Boutens took the title with only half a point of difference. With this Boutens extends his successful year after winning the British championship (BRKC) and the Dutch championship (DOK). In the Belgian championship (BIKC) he had to take pleasure with 3th place.

Papke finished second, with Breckpot following only some points behind on the third place. Both of them were able to win the Polish championship before on this circuit. After his dramatic final Grooten was able to get enough points to finish 4th. This way he stayed before the first Polish driver Mikołaj Marczyk.

PIKC 2015 – podium

P1. Ruben Boutens
P2. Sebastian Papke
P3. Matts Breckpot
P4. Mathias Grooten
P5. Mikołaj Marczyk

For the juniors this weekend, it was clearly a neck-and-neck race between the Belgian Giovanni Baccellieri (who won the BIKC junior and senior title) and the Dutchman Rico Haarbosch who overwhelmed the competition in the junior class of the DOK in his home country.

In the end it was Rico Haarbosch who took the victory, Giovanni Baccillieri (the winner from last year) finished second. The Dutchman seemed fastest of the two the whole weekend when they were driving on 70kg (in the junior class, min. weight was 70kg, while in the general class, it was 90kg). Giovanni had to deal with some bad luck also.
For 3th place it was very close between two Polish drivers. Rafał Porada took it in the end, the 15-year old girl Kasia Brem, finished 4th after making a crucial mistake during the pitstop procedure. The Dutchman Danny Van Domburgh closed the top 5.

P1. Rico Haarbosch
P2. Giovanni Baccillieri
P3. Rafał Porada
P4. Kasia Brem
P5. Danny Van Domburgh

PIKC – successful drivers

A very successful weekend for the non-Polish drivers, especially for the Dutchmen!
Furthermore, every podium of every race got medals, the minority went to Poland.

PIKC 2015 – winners; Rico Haarbosch & Ruben Boutens

The full results of all the classes can be found here:
PIKC 2015 results