Title race heats up as Blackett gains ground

Aaron Blackett continued his charge towards the 2026 Sectus Technologies Barbados Karting Association (BKA) Champion Driver title by further cutting into Edward Norris’s lead following a fiercely contested fourth round at Bushy Park last Sunday.

Blackett, who was the top scorer in the Easykart 125cc class for the second consecutive round, reduced Norris’s advantage to just 12 points at the halfway stage of the championship. Norris leads the standings on 369 points, with Blackett close behind on 357 and Jacob Mayers third on 346.

Having trimmed four points from Norris’s lead in April, Blackett maintained his momentum with three hard-fought race victories to again emerge as the round’s leading scorer, tightening the title race heading into the second half of the season.

Blackett, who finished second overall when he was 100cc Champion in 2021, battled wheel-to-wheel on Sunday with 2024 Champion Driver Jacob Mayers, winning margins measured in inches. Blackett was fastest in Qualifying, but Mayers led the opening race until the last lap, when Blackett passed him to win by two-tenths.

Moving forward earlier from the reversed grid in race two, Blackett held on for victory from Mayers, who took second on the final lap, Aeden Bruce claiming his second of four third places, after some lively final laps. Mayers led Blackett throughout race three to win by one-tenth, the positions reversed in the last race, when Mayers dropped back in the early stages, recovering to cross the line just seven-hundredths behind.

In the 60cc Cadets class, the rivalry between Norris and Ava Mayers produced some first-class racing, the pair so evenly matched they scored identical points. Mayers, who became the BKA’s first female karter to be overall top points scorer for the day in April, qualified fastest of the Cadets. While she was three-tenths quicker than Norris, he moved ahead on the first lap of race one, winning by 3secs, with Finn Cox third.

In the reversed-grid second race, the front-runners moved up in the early laps, although Norris’s winning margin fell to 1.3s. In the third outing, Mayers snatched the lead on the final lap to win by 0.4sec, while there were three changes of lead in an exciting final race, Mayers again the winner, by the same narrow margin.

There were no runners in Easykart 100cc class, so points leader Jaydn Brathwaite has slipped to seventh in the overall standings behind Cox, who finished third all day in 60cc,  and Bruce. The fifth date in the eight-round championship is Sunday, July 19.

 

(BM/BT)