Thrills, spills, torrential downpours and a pair of top-six national finishes.
All in a wild weekend’s work for Okotokian George Deadman as he raced to a fifth place finish in Briggs and sixth place showing in Rotax in the Junior ranks at the 2022 Motomaster Canadian Karting Championships, Aug. 18-21 in Bowmanville, ONT.
“Last time I wasn’t expecting crazy stuff to happen and a lot of crazy stuff happened,” said Deadman, a Grade 10 student at Holy Trinity Academy. “And now I was really expecting anything to happen and I nailed how to overtake on that track because there’s a lot of overtaking spots and you need to be good at that to pass people there.”
No stranger to navigating hurdles at nationals over his previous two entries, Deadman again had to overcome early setbacks to claw his way back up the standings.
In Briggs, Deadman was hit in the first lap of the pre-final.
Undaunted, he scrambled back over three races to striking distance entering the final.
“I was top three through all of the practice sessions and when it came to the race I got taken out in the first one,” he said. “It was unfortunate, I got taken out and was 14th, 15th and then throughout the weekend I worked my way back up to eighth in the final.”
In the final, Deadman avoided a chaotic start featuring a number of crashes in front of him and executed a perfect pass in the final laps to claim fifth spot.
“At first I was thinking this is so annoying, I can never get a break at nationals, but I guess that’s big racing for you,” he said. “It’s never easy over there.
“I was just very angry and thought if anyone is going to do anything stupid, I’m not going to hang around too long and just try and get past that and go forward as fast as I can.”
His journey in the Rotax, the class featuring larger and more powerful vehicles, was not without obstacles either as Deadman made his national debut in the discipline.
Deadman navigated through some bumps where a competitor drove over the back of his kart and had to rally from 18th to 12th.
“I was driving really pissed off,” he said with a laugh. “I threw everything at it and everyone was crashing ahead of me so I just avoided that and went through.”
The chaos carried over into the final, where Deadman started in 12th, as the racers battled the elements with a downpour on the track coming on the heels of days of hot and humid conditions.
“There was eight people that crashed at the beginning,” he said. “The first corner I took it easy and everyone went pilling into each other. Once I got through that, I was in fourth by the third corner and just tried to hang on from there.
“I spun once and ended up sixth, but there was a lot of chaotic stuff that happened in that race.”
The busy slate at nationals proved to be a boon as Deadman didn’t have the luxury of time to dwell on past races or look too far ahead.
“You have to think, ‘What am I going to do next race? What’s going to happen next race,’” he said. “You can’t think about bad races for too long, you have to have good decision making straight away.”
The Deadman Racing team is inviting the community to attend a fundraising barbecue held at the Sobeys Okotoks on Sept. 17 at 1 p.m., a shindig that will feature food, music, prize giveaways along with karts on display.
For more information, follow @GeorgeDeadmanRacing on Facebook.
