Kart track set to host leading racers

Blenheim’s burgeoning KartSport Marlborough club will play host to the third leg of an innovative new series at the weekend.

On March 18-19, over 120 racers will converge on the Marlborough track for two days racing in the challenging and well-supported Kartstars series.

Kartstars is made up of five rounds of racing on five different New Zealand tracks. To be eligible to win the series, competitors must attend all events which is a plus for the Marlborough club, luring more North Islanders over the strait.

At the time of writing 118 racers had entered the Harvest Marlborough event, 70 of them from the North Island.

Kartstars has been described as “KartSport New Zealand's ultimate test of our nation's race teams, drivers and machines”.

It incorporates some of the most challenging KNZ Championships, including the CIK Trophy and the NZ Sprint Nationals.

The series commenced in January, 2023 at one of the nation’s most iconic club Group E events, Auckland’s City of Sails, moved to Hamilton in February, on to Blenheim in March, then Manawatu in April, culminating at KartSport Rotorua’s Sulphur City grand finale in May.

Being granted a leg of the Kartstars series is yet another feather in the cap of the go-ahead Marlborough club.

Vice president Matt Broughan said the club had gone “from strength-to-strength”, labelling it “the fastest-growing club in New Zealand by a long shot”.

“We were named club of the year in 2021 and we are now the club the rest of NZ are looking to and asking what are we doing.

“We have spent well over $200,000 here over the past three years on improvements, memberships have soared. When we first started karting you would be lucky to get 15 people racing, now it is common to have close to 60-70 at club days. The committee is full of motivated, talented people … former members have come back into it … it is just such a good, wholesome family environment to be in, there is something for everyone,” he added.