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As part of the Western Canada ROK series, the Saskatoon Kart Racers hosted the second regional race for the Western Canada ROK cup.

The South Sask Kart Club invited all its members to come up to Saskatoon and give the Saskatoon Kart Racers a show of support, not only with the ROK regional, but with the participation of the casual ROK racers as well.  All in all we had 12 racers attend the race sessions with the majority racing as a single ROK group (ROK Pro and ROK Masters) with a couple of our club racers running in the junior races.

Most of the SSKC members met at our track and then drove up to Saskatoon for the day.  Overall it was a decent day for racing despite all the rain in and around the Martensville track over the past week and the threat of rain for Sunday.  The SKR club had been pumping water off the track all week and despite a few wet spots that made practice and qualifying "interesting", the race line was mostly dry by the time afternoon racing had started.  There was a couple of minor wet spots to snare the odd driver who missed the "dry" race line so that added another element to the race and did catch a couple of racers in the first race.

Given all the Rokers ran in the same class it was a good size field for the races.  As expected Nick and Darcy continued their strong competition at the pro level.  Nick had an excellent first race using his past experience on the SKR track to pretty much lead from start to finish.  Darcy adapted to the track fairly quickly having followed Nick through race one picking up the race line for his first appearance at the Martensville track and justed edged out Nick in the second race.  There was strong compettion for 2nd and 3rd with Keith then Sam taking second.  Full race results will be up on MyLaps.

Saskatoon Kart Racers thanked the SSKC for coming up to their race day and providing the extra support of another race class.  It was an excellent experience for those who had not raced the SKR track before and a nice change of pace in the race schedule... especially since our race day had been rained out the weekend before. 

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As part of the Western Canada ROK series, the South Sask Kart Club hosted the first of the two ROK National Cup series races in Western Canada and the third ROK Regional race.  SSKC also ran their club race 5 & 6 on Sunday as part of the series.

Weather was not an issue this year as we finally caught a break from all the rain.  Racers did not escape the impact of the recent wet spell as some of the out of town racers got caught in the detour on the Trans Canada due to wash outs in the highway in a couple of locations.  Otherwise; the whole weekend offered up a fairly sunny day with moderate temperatures in the mid 20's°C.

Friday was the first day of the event, but was limited to practice time for all the classes.

Saturday dawned with humid weather and a limited threat of rain showers.  We continued on with the practice sessions and the bad weather that was forcasted never developed.  A quick count of drivers gave us  about 20 participants across the 3 ROK categories, ROK Pro, ROK Masters and ROK Junior.  We also had a few Junior 1 Honda racers in that class giving us about two dozen drivers.  Participants came from BC, Alberta and Saskatchewan.  Practices wound up late Saturday afternoon and we moved into race number 1 in all classes.  Racing went off without a hitch and the race leaders started to established their positions in all the classes after the first race was completed.

Saturday wound up with an excellent steak dinner hosted at the 3 Flags Motorsport Park. 

Sunday offered up another excellent day with a partly cloudy sky moderating the sunshine.  The day started a bit warmer than Saturday, but pretty much a carbon copy of Saturdays weather.  Sunday added in a few more drivers for the SSKC Race 5 & 6 sessions that were incorporated as a race within a race as part of the ROK cup.  After a very quick warm-up for each class, we moved into race 2.  The ROK Pro racers were hard at it with a bit of bump and grind in the midfield over several laps.  On the last lap there was spin out on the second turn off the back straight-a-way and the lead kart became part of the incident, taking him out with half a lap to go.  The other 3 classes completed without major incident although there was the odd lost chain and a few missed corners that resulted in changes in race positions.  The fields position in each class  pretty much mirrored the race one results with a bit of jockeying in the mid-field. Emotions were high at the end of that race and the race directors reminded the participants that safety is a key goal and everyone need to pay attention to the flags.  Racers were reminded it was critical the racers acknowledge the flags and gave due considerations to those who were faster, especially in lapping circumstances.   With that reminder, the 3rd and final race of the day was gridded up.  The race went off without a hitch and incidents were limited to lost chains and the odd overshoot of a corner as racers gave it their all for final position and a shot at the top points.

All in all, an excellent weekend.

Congratulations to all the racers for a great race weekend.