Chalk it up to experience. That’s how 13-year-old Nathan Blok is viewing his first year in the faster Junior Rotax go-kart class in which he ended the season mid-pack in the points, placing 12th out of 23.

Now on break until spring, Blok is hopeful that having an engine that runs well, a good go-kart and the knowledge and experience gained over the past year will result in a more successful season in 2008, not to say that 2007 was a total loss.

“This was a very competitive class we were competing in this year,” said Blok, noting that the majority of competitors were in their second or third year in Rotax and ages 14 or 15, making him one of the youngest to start the series.

“We had a huge learning curve and were up against four factory teams with enormous resources and mechanics with years of knowledge and experience,” he said.

While the Racin’ Nathan Team started the year with a used 2002 Tonykart chassis, a brand new engine and a 2002 engine as a back up, both Blok and his parents Steve and Sandra decided after the first half of the season that it would take substantial investment and track time to tune the chassis to be competitive, and even then, it may never be a podium kart.

As a result, they decided to purchase a new Mach 1 kart from Germany, however that meant going through another learning curve to get the set up.

“In the first part of the year, our engine had always required a jet higher than all the other karts to run correctly, but it continually got worse as the year went on,” said Steve Blok. “By Race 5 in the end of August we were running 3 jets too high. In Race 6, both engines blew up. And in the last race of the year our engine needed10 jets higher than required to run properly, and we were still having problems.”

SRA Karting (the Canadian Rotax Engine Importer) took the team’s engine to find out what the problem was and it turned out to be something they had never seen this before.
“It was discovered that the ignition box was defective, and had been from the start of the year. Through testing it was discovered it had been underpowered by almost 4 horsepower,” Steve said.

That lead to some disappointing finishes for Blok throughout the last few races of the year, including 12th place in Race #5 at Monte St. Hilaire where rain challenged the setup and crash damage slowed him down, thirteenth place in the final race of the season during which he ran with a borrowed engine and a disappointing Race#6 during which Blok blew both his new engine in practice and his backup in the pre-final leaving him out of the final with a DNF (did not finish).

Despite the challenges and disappointments, Blok said there were some high points of the season including the fact he got a new kart and by the end of the year, was able to successfully get the setup right.

He also set the fastest lap of the race in Toronto where he dropped in to race against karters who had raced there at least 12 times that year, and on the day he blew two engines, he was .2 seconds faster in practice than the top running karts

“This year I’ve gained a vast amount of knowledge, and the challenges our team has faced has tested our patience and helped brought out our perseverance. With this now behind us, we look forward to 2008 and only hope that our luck will change – I think based on all we’ve been through – we’re going to work hard and see it pay off,” Blok said.


FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
Steve Blok (613) 582-3877