Page 7 - 2021CalSpeedMagazinejune

TRound 6 - May 29
he second half of the 2021 CalSpeed Sprint Series kicked off over Memorial Day Weekend, as round six of ten would take to the longest and fastest of the reverse
layouts; Grande Counter Clockwise. With the Winter Series in the books, the second best four-out-of five sub championship would get started, as drivers would not only vie for the overall points, but would score their first tallies in the Summer Series department...
The first driver to make some noise in the second half of the year would be top ten overall contender Mike Gonzales, scoring his second career pole position, with round #3 winner Leo Ovtcharov P2, and round #5 winner Carl Zhu rounding out the top 3. Notably, last month’s pole sitter and second in the points Michael Martin clocked a lap just .012 off of Zhu to continue his strong qualifying runs in fourth.
The first heat race would see Gonzales lead the field away for the first standing start of the day, but he would come under immediate pressure from Martin, and newly-crowned Winter Series champ Evan Lawrence. Lawrence would eventually wrestle the lead away, but could not drop the pair, and the trio fought all the way to the checkers with Lawrence coming out on top, followed by Gonzales, and Martin.
In Heat two it was a mano-e-mano fight between lead off man Leo Ovtcharov, and challenger Vince Azua, the pair eventually pulling away from the rest of the field. Azua would take over in the early stages, but Ovtcharov fought back at the midpoint, before Vince finally made his way around and held off Leo for his first career Heat win.
In the final Heat it would be another close race, this time between the most recent winner in the Series Carl Zhu, Albert Yeh, and up and coming talent Lucas Weisenberg, the trio pulling away to make it a three-horse race. In the end it would be Zhu holding on for his second heat race win in a row, and with his strong qualy effort, would lead the field away for the second A-Main in a row as well...
The Sprint Series would not only be Randee Tolentino’s CalSpeed debut, it was also be his first time in a kart, and he looked to get pretty comfortable with things, as he led from the start of the C-Main. In fact, he would pull out a decent lead before finally getting tracked down by fellow newcomer, young Case Vanderschaaf, would make the pass stick just past half way. From there both Tolentino and Vanderschaaf would roll on unchallenged, with the latter crossing the line first, however the win would be decided at scales. Unfortunately, Case would come up a bit light, handing the win back over to Randee, who ecstatically moved on to the B-Main...
A Main Podium
B-Main Winner Frank Chen
C-Main Winner Randee Tolentino