Summarize

South African karting is set for revolution as the new Vortex Super Rok DVS class continues to move the sport back towards its Original Karting roots in a competitive, cost effective and completely fair new championship from 2018. Super Rok DVS not only removes the need for stratospheric budgets to race at the front, but being a controlled karting formula, it also levels the playing field with only identical specification engines allowed and each driver drawing his or her engine out of a hat every race weekend.

The new Vortex Super Rok DVS engine is derived from the same OK (for Original Karting) engine family as the DDJ units so successfully used in the inaugural and super-competitive 2017 MSA Academy championship as endorsed by karting’s CIK international governing body, to see karting back to a more affordable, more level playing field. Vortex Super Rok DVS engines are built utilising the very latest technology to the most exacting standards to ensure the elimination of performance variances and the need for the best equipment to win, but the class rather allows a father and son/daughter team to simply arrive and race, without that usually essential cost and know-how.

While other karting classes see well-monied competitors perpetually at an advantage by spending significant budgets on tuning and fettling their bought engines, DVS Super Rok engines are owned, equalised and maintained by the series promotors and owners, RKT and rented out to the drivers as part of a most affordable package on a race-by-race basis. 

In Super Rok DVS, each driver’s practice and qualifying engine quite literally drawn out of a hat at the start of the race weekend, before the three quickest drivers will swap their complete motor units including carburettor and exhaust with that of the slowest trio after qualifying. That completely negates the possibility of any one driver enjoying an equipment advantage over the next. 

This process also sets a most reasonable cost of competition, thanks to a set entry fee, engine rental, oil and a set of control tyres per race day over and above the cost of each driver’s own chassis and travel. Super Rok DVS also subscribes to the simple, old school Original Karting or OK tenet of pure racing — the DVS engine has no battery, no starter motor or clutch and the karts need to be bump-started in the traditional karting way. Drivers may purchase a practice engine for testing purposes only.

For 2018, Super Rok DVS will race four times on Cape regional karting dates at Killarney, four times in Gauteng as part of the Rok Cup SA roadshow at Zwartkops and Laserfiche Vereeniging and likely once at iDube in KwaZulu Natal. The 2018 South African Super Rok DVS interprovincial champion earns a drive in the 2018 Super Rok DVS International Finals in Lonato, Italy as well as an open opportunity to compete in the 2018 CIK-FIA World Championship Finals.

“Super Rok DVS in a new open age group 'Original Karting' class for South Africa that evens the playing field to make sure that competitors who have the budget to buy expensive, preferential equipment will no longer have the upper hand over karters who do not have that luxury,” series representative Riccardo Stermin explained. “Super Rok DVS will run as an interprovincial series around the country for 2018, with Cape drivers racing up north on Gauteng dates and vice-versa — there will be an overseas prize drive for the champion and we are looking at a South African national championship the following year.

“We are confident that Super Rok DVS will attract new drivers to karting and even bring back drivers who left because it was impossible to compete with the big budget racers and their best equipment and it has already drawn among the country's best kart racers to compete too. “There will be none of that bought advantage in Super Rok DVS — every kid will have equal equipment drawn out of a hat, so now a brilliant talent who may otherwise have been lost to the sport because his family could not afford the ludicrous costs, can compete and win on an even and reasonably affordable playing field.”

To find out more on Super Rok DVS karting, contact Riccardo Stermin at 083 675 2057 or riccardo@phoenixrisk.co.za.