Adrian Cauchi’s strong comeback at Melilli with his Virtu Ferries Birel

By Alfred A. Farrugia

If he had opted to race in the over 30 category – assuming the regulations would have allowed it – he would have finished second in class behind Roberto Lino. Instead he preferred to compete in the fastest group.
The 10th round of the Sicilian Regional Championship turned into a very bumpy ride for Adrian. The same type of weather that lighted the skies in Malta on Thursday evening before the race, did the same in Siracusa. Heavy thunderstorms and a lot of rain cleaned the Pista del Sole of any rubber accumulation from previous races and rendered the track fairly slippery. The changing weather conditions and unreliable atmospheric pressure played havoc with the settings of the racing karts and their engines, but this obviously affected all karts and drivers.
On Friday, in a break in the bad weather, Adrian succeeded to register a very fast lap in free practice but this was not an official time. It indicated, however, that the setting was on the right path for the qualifying session. Eventually, he and the other drivers present at the track had to call it a day because the rain came back. Saturday was another mixed bag with good times and slow times as the climate kept changing.

Front row
On Sunday morning Adrian managed to secure a place on the front row and claim the second position on the starting grid for the pre-final race with a lap of 47.316 seconds, just a fraction of a second slower - 0.474 seconds - than the reigning Sicilian champion Francesco Tomarchio who clocked the best time of 46.842 seconds to secure pole position. Adrian’s fastest qualifying lap was better than the fastest lap registered in the final race at the same circuit last April.

In the pre-final race Adrian’s second position was short lived as Lucas Pace, the Junior champion who was a close third, made a bold move and elbowed Adrian at the very first corner as a result of which Adrian lost momentum and a number of positions. As he began to gain one position at a time, Adrian was nudged again, this time by Gianluigi Nicotra back into sixth place, but slowly he recovered to the fourth position in class and fifth overall – just 0.164 seconds behind the fourth overall place of Roberto Lino.

Lucas succeeded to maintain his second position with very good laps during the pre-final race, while Adrian registered the second fastest lap again in the pre-final with a time of 47.618 seconds registered in the twelfth lap. This was marginally faster than Lucas and Antonino Sardo and Roberto Lino in third and fourth positions respectively, but slower that Francesco Tomarchio who was in a class of his own.

Final race
There was a lot more in store for the eventful final race. Adrian tried hard to move forward from the 5th place to the 2nd position, but he had to lift his foot from the throttle to avoid another collision with Lucas who apparently tried to do the impossible to keep Alfio Leonardi from overtaking him. But then the worst nightmare for Adrian happened. At the apex of the hairpin, Gianluigi inadvertently or consciously failed to brake in time and tapped the rear corner of Adrian’s kart sending the Maltese driver spinning and allowing the whole field to pass by.

This move is very frequent in NASCAR racing and it is very difficult to judge whether it is an acceptable racing tactic or foul play. Ironically, Adrian made some spare parts available to Gianluigi as the representative of Rotax in Sicily was out of stock! If Adrian had front brakes like all the others this might not have happened, because he too could have braked late.

By the end of the second lap Adrian recovered to the 11th position from a field of 16 drivers because 2 drivers had failed to start the race, two had problems in the first lap, and Antonino Sardo had to retire. Eventually Lucas retired after the second lap as a result of coming together with another driver, and in the official results he appears as disqualified.
Thus Adrian moved to the 10th position by the end of the third lap, moved to 9th by lap four, to 8th by lap six and to 7th by lap seven. Then he overtook two drivers at the same time in the ninth lap to place himself back in the 5th position – that is the same position he had at the start of the final race.

It is evident that if he had not been pushed off the track, this energy and determination could have seen Adrian move forward to a podium position once again. In these circumstances, he had to be content with a fourth in class as it was impossible to narrow the gap of practically 8 seconds between him and Carmelo Finocchiaro. But a comeback from the rear to the fifth overall place was no mean feat, registering 7 laps under 48 seconds each in the process.

It was a pity that Lucas and Adrian did not succeed to avoid each other as they had planned to do because both of them could have finished in a better position, if other drivers had not interfered in their efforts. It appears that young Lucas was over ambitious on this occasion, or at least that is what the stewards of the meeting thought. With a little more care Adrian and Lucas could have finished on the podium.