We got started in karting on Sept 2006 when my 7 years old son “Diego Alexander” heard the sounds of the kart engines while driving during the evening near the Dominican karting track in the night time in front of the ocean track.

He ask me to please stop and take a look, we ended up stating for the complete event and which I cant remember if his eyes blinked for a second, this was something similar as love at first sight considering he had never seen or came close to anything similar other than a kids battery kart he had for X-mas when he was 3 years old on his grandpa home.

That September he mentioned at home he wanted a Go-kart for Xmas, and surely he continued the quest till December 25th when Santa dropped him a new Kids Hasse with a Comer 80 engine as used on the local club to start practicing and learning his driving skills.

Time passed so fast Diego was already by the ends of 2007 taking over the total attention and podiums in 2007 but something was happening, he was becoming bored and not interested since he wanted more track time and less mechanic time in the bench. Comer engines thou we had 4, had become very unreliable and unstable, spending a lot of time and financial resources to try to keep his momentum and speed as expected. Soon he was to be 8 and he wanted to try a Rotax engine, so his grandpa got him a Rotax MicroMax, this became the turning point for Diego and also solution for me as his dad. Next thing we knew after some time practicing on our local tracks in Santo Domingo, we were to be participating on events in Florida ( FL. Winter Tour ) , Mexico , Jamaica as well as in Costa Rica. Now we had found the class we need to get the experiences and fun Diego wanted as well as good times in the track practicing and less time fixing engines.

2008 arrive and Diego was already practicing on the MicroMax now upgraded to a MiniMax in his new CRG with PSL Canada support and guidelines, working along the ranks and looking for more quality time with his Rotax’s. At present Diego has the lead on the Dominican Caribbean Territory with more points accumulated from 2008 and 2009 in MiniMax. During 2009 his local club has allowed Diego with 11 years old to participate also in the Rotax Max Jr Class, performing fairly well considering all the work and resistance that requires a driver to participate on 2 classes per day with different chassis sizes and settings, the ironic part of all these classes and events is that we have been using the same 2 engines with started since 2007 with fairly little maintenance and headaches for the mechanics.

Recently we decided to sell our old Rotax’s for others to get started in the karting sport and Mexico SSC Rotax have sent us 2 new 2009 engines so we can start testing and break-in them for the next January-Feb-March season of the Florida Winter Tour, the funny part of this story is the Diego feels so secure with his old engines he was neglected to get rid of them since they are so reliable and fast. So before letting go these 2 Rotax he wanted to test and retest his new engines in Homestead Track before allowing him team mechanic Julio and Juanki the OK to proceed !! Hope you liked this short story of how we got to know the Rotax engines. Enclosed some pictures if interested.

Regards

Joachim Barkhausen ( Diego Barkhausen )