Invercargill Karter Alex Crosbie Takes On The Aussies

It has been a very big couple of months for 12 year old Invercargill karter Alex Crosbie.
Crosbie competed in the New Zealand National Schools Kartsport Championship in Wellington during the recent school holidays before travelling to Melbourne for the City Of Melbourne Titles early in August.

At the School Nationals Alex competed in a field of 22 karters from all over New Zealand. Practice started the weekend before at a club day with racing commencing the following Saturday 13th July. The format for the championship was different to normal and drivers received a random grid draw for the first four heats. Alex was given 11th, 17th, 14th and 4th. He had managed to make up enough points over these four heats to start the final in 4th position. After a good start he came home in second with nothing splitting the top two. This was enough to give him 2nd overall in the championship.

It was then back to school for a week before he flew to Melbourne to compete in the 2019 City of Melbourne Titles. The entries were massive compared to New Zealand with 335 entries across 12 classes. (New Zealand’s top event this year only had 8 classes and 155 competitors). There were 26 karters in Alex’s class. He was driving in a class higher than he normally would back home – using the same chassis but with a bigger engine and stickier tires. The practice day on the Friday was like a race day, the karters all very competitive. Unlike New Zealand they weren’t afraid to hit and force you off the track.

Saturday was qualifying and two heats, with the pre-final and final on the Sunday. With Alex competing against some of the top kids in Australia it was always going to be tough. He managed to finish a respectable 11th. He was lucky enough to have Sera Driver Development and Erebus Motorsport helping out the team he was in, with the use of their data engineer and Supercar star Anton de Pasquale showing up for a chat on the Saturday.

The trip wouldn’t have been possible without the support of his sponsors Stresscrete Southland and Allied Concrete along with the help and equipment from Dave Sera at SDD in Australia, and the support of Brendon and Cameron at Tasman Karting.