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Ghazi Motlekar, the South African Mini Max champion racing under the Mozambican flag enjoyed a dream debut in Sunday's Rotax Max Italia season opener at Adria south of Venice. Motlekar qualified fourth, a tenth of a second off the Junior Max pace before storming to the Pre Final win and then ended up a debut second by all of eight-hundredths of a second in the first round of the Italian championship.

“That was a dream start and a great first step in my campaign to qualify for the ‘Olympics of Karting’ Rotax Junior Max Grand Finals,” an ecstatic Ghazi confirmed. “We had good pace and I qualified on the second row and was in the fight from the get-go. I managed to get in front when it mattered most to win by a comfortable half a second and put it on pole for the final.

“That race was brilliant — Fracassi Kiko and I managed to open a gap on the rest and we were able to race really hard all the way to the flag — we finished side-by-side but he pipped me by 0.083 seconds! “Best of all is the atmosphere here - it’s so cool to race and still have a great time with my Italian rivals off the track, some of whom watched the live stream of the SA Rotax Junior races with us — this is proving such a great experience!

“Most importantly I must thank my parents for this incredible experience, without whom I would never be here and of course our South African-Italian team Luca and zio Mauro Munaretto for all their help, backing and support. “also well done to Luca on that DD2 win — we all had a really great day!"