11 year old Alex O'Grady becomes Ireland's youngest world champion

11-year-old Alex O’Grady from Loughrea became Ireland’s youngest world champion at the weekend when he won the IAME World Championship Cadet final in Le Mans. Alex is a member of the Southern Karting Club based in Tynagh and races with Fusion Motorsport in England. The race report from the Kartxpress website is below:

This year saw the inception of two new classes at the IAME International Final with Minime (FFSA) / Cadet (MUK) one of them. The youngest of our warriors was made up with a 28 kart field for the final. Like all the finals it treated us with plenty of excitement and a tense last lap which would see Alex O’Grady (IRL) just hold on to take the win.

Neither would start on the front row though, that would be formed by Lewis Wherrel (GBR) and Zach Knight (GBR) who battled for the win in a close ran Pre Final with O’Grady also fighting for the win in third.

The start of the race would see Wherrel get the better of the starts leading Knight across the line at the end of the first lap. Into turn one Slater appeared to get caught out by Knight through turn one and made contact which saw Knight drop back and O’Grady inherit second.

O’Grady continued his charge as he took the lead from Wherrel with Slater going into second. However, this was going to be far from a three horse race with more drivers coming into the mix including the likes of Knight, Bishop Macaulay (GBR), Jack Buckley (IRL), Andrei Dabja (IRL) and Lisa Billard (FRA).

Lap six was where the race really started to heat up! With Knight setting fastest laps and quickly recovering to third, Slater felt it was time to go for the lead. His first attempt to pass was unsuccessful and his second led him to lose a position to Knight and it gave O’Grady a gap 0.7 seconds.

The start of lap seven saw Macaulay pull off one of the moves of the event going from fourth to second in one clean pass! But as Knight desperately tried to get back passed the two went side by side through the chicane with Macaulay eventually having to run over the grass.

Out of the drama, Slater emerged in second with Knight third and Slater now had two laps to try and close a half-second gap. It had everyone on the edge of their seats as Slater drove out of his skin to close the gap. But on the last lap, despite being such a young age O’Grady showed no signs of nerves and did no unnecessary defending all helping him go on to become a deserved champion!

The end of the race alone was enough to prove the inception of this class had been a success. From the start, O’Grady looked hard to beat and made no mistakes to crown himself the International Final champion ahead of Slater and Wherrel.