Summarize

Sunday’s second round South African Rotax Junior Max karting championships started on the right footing for Jayden Els at Vereeniging's Laserfiche Raceway, but the weekend did not pan out as expected for the 2016 Mini Max world champion. Els was quick throughout practice and in spite of a small mistake, qualified fourth, but he was eliminated from the weekend in a crash late in race 1 — his hand was squashed in the accident to see Jayden off to have x-rays.

“Luckily nothing is broken, but my hand is badly bruised, swollen and it’s still quite painful,” Jayden rued. “It’s a pity — Leeroy Poulter did a lot of work on our engine and we had excellent pace until qualifying — I made a small mistake, but fourth was still good and we went into the race with a plan to wait and see what happened up front and for the race to unfold — the top five was within 0.1 seconds - something was bound to go down up front…

“I had set the fastest lap by then, so I would have started race 2 on pole position, but I was in fourth behind Daniele Patrizi and when I made my move, he made a desperate move to defend — his kart mounted mine and I was out, but worst of all, I was hurt in the process. “It’s a pity that some racers who have so much talent, do not understand that you only win championships or world titles if you do not gamble on track.

“Anyway, the crash has also ruined our championship, but we will be back — our pace was brilliant on Saturday so now it’s just a matter of dusting myself off and getting back on track.”