Scott Barnes gears up for ‘Super Bowl’ of karting
Scott Barnes is between the two biggest races of his year and preparing for the “Super Bowl” of karting.
Barnes has just finished in the top ten in the Cup Karts North America Grand Nationals and has just four weeks before the Skusa Super Nationals in Las Vegas in mid-November.
The Bermudian is full of anticipation as he builds up to the big event and is ready to take on the best kraters in the world.
“Next up is the Super Bowl of karting for Shifter racing in North America,” Barnes said.
“There will be more than 50 drivers in my class from all around the world and it is the biggest karting event in the US.
“There will be 450 drivers and it starts on November 16. The goal is to make the podium, we missed out on that last year after some bad heat races. We were a top-five cart but just had bad luck. We podiumed the two years before that so that will be the goal, but it will be a hard event.”
Barnes is hoping for better in Las Vegas after feeling a tad disappointed to only make the top ten last weekend.
“ This was the biggest event in North America, I want to say ever, but certainly in the last 12 years,” Barnes said.
There were 600 entries and more than 550 drivers. There were big fields and 52 in my Masters Class. It was the best of the best in North America and Canada and there were seven countries represented.
“We started off a little slow on Thursday and I was driving a 206, which is a slower motor package and different to what I’m used to in the shifters, so it took a full day to get the driving lines down.
“We qualified 22nd in our group but they split the group in half so we were second in our group and then we had three heat races. First one we finished sixteenth, so moved our way forward a little bit.
“The second heat we had a bad start and fell to 35th but we raced back up to finish the race 21st and in the third I finished fourteenth. That worked out to set us up for a fifteenth-place start in the final and we worked our way up to a high of seventh but finished ninth eventually.
“We did set the second-fastest lap time in the final, so overall a top-ten finish out of 52. Our goal was the top five and to put it on the podium butt took us a little bit too long to get up to the speed we wanted to be at.”