The first race of the 2021 season was waiting for the two protégés of the Mercedes AMG Customer Junior Team by CVPG last weekend. At the WSK Champions Cup in Adria, Sandro and Juliano Holzem competed against the world’s best kart drivers and established themselves on the top spot.
After sometimes turbulent races in 2020, the two young talents from Rhineland-Palatinate wanted to start this year and constantly fight for victories. The two started in Italy. The World Series Karting (WSK) kicked off with the Champions Cup and a record field awaited the Holzem twins.
Already in the Free Practice sessions the twins underlined their ambitions and put themselves into the group of favorites. In Qualifying, Sandro caught the best lap and ended up in a strong twelfth place. He improved this up in the preliminary rounds, finishing 2nd, 5th and 10th, continuing to establish himself in the top bunch, but also had to record a failure and thus dropped to intermediate position 23. In the pre-finals he still had the best chance of reaching the final. This time, however, he was the victim of a collision and involuntarily retired prematurely.
“That was a great pity. I felt great all weekend and was sure to get to the final. I was back in the top ten in the race and there would have been more chances. Now I’ll attack again next week”, Sandro continues to be combative.
Juliano started the race in 24th place in Qualifying and was in the heats on the top ten. Like his brother, however, he also had to cope with failure. In the intermediate ranking he was in a promising 32nd place. The 16-year-old got off to a good start in the pre-finals and finished 12th, qualifying for the final and finishing the weekend in 24th place as the best German driver.
“A lot can always happen in a race like this. But this time everything was fine and I had really good runs. Our new racing material from Kart Republic and IAME/KVS works very well and was an important building block for the good results. I’m looking forward to the coming weekend”, said the racer from Polch.
The two young talents will continue on Thursday. Then the first round of the WSK Super Masters Series takes place in Adria. Once again, a high-calibre field of participants is expected.
