GUARDIAN ME­DIA NEWS­ROOM

Two lo­cal teenagers will rep­re­sent Trinidad & To­ba­go in the Fédéra­tion In­ter­na­tionale de l'Au­to­mo­bile (FIA) Mo­tor­sport Games to be held in Va­len­cia, Spain from Oc­to­ber 23-27 this year.

Alex Shar­ma, 14, and Ben­jamin Ma­hon, 17, will rep­re­sent the coun­try in the Kart Sprint Ju­nior and Se­nior cat­e­gories, re­spec­tive­ly.

The FIA Mo­tor­sport Games, re­gard­ed as the Olympics of mo­tor­sports, brings to­geth­er over 60 na­tions par­tic­i­pat­ing in 27 dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines of mo­tor­sport in the com­pe­ti­tion which will see more than 1,000 en­trants.

It is the first time that Trinidad and To­ba­go will be rep­re­sent­ed at the Games.

They fol­low in the foot­steps of oth­er Caribbean na­tions, Bar­ba­dos and the Ba­hamas and will each com­pete against 35 of the best kart dri­vers in the world.

Kart­ing is uni­ver­sal­ly seen as the foun­da­tion dis­ci­pline on the path­way to For­mu­la 1, the pin­na­cle of mo­tor­sport.

There are al­ready nu­mer­ous tal­ents in the field with Caribbean lin­eage, in­clud­ing Lewis Hamil­ton (For­mu­la 1), Zane Mal­oney (For­mu­la 2) and Alex Pow­ell (For­mu­la 4).

The sport of kart rac­ing has seen a resur­gence lo­cal­ly in re­cent times with the gov­ern­ing body, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Kart­ing As­so­ci­a­tion (TT­KA) host­ing a cham­pi­onship for na­tion­al dri­vers to par­tic­i­pate in.

Chil­dren as young as six years of age are el­i­gi­ble to en­ter.

Shar­ma, who has been rac­ing for just two years and is the 2023 Trinidad and To­ba­go Kart­ing As­so­ci­a­tion Rook­ie of the Year said, "The Games will be a step up since I’ll be com­pet­ing against the world’s best Ju­nior kart dri­vers. Some of them I know and have dri­ven against be­fore. I in­tend to do my best to se­cure the best pos­si­ble re­sult for the team."

Reign­ing TT­KA Sports­man Class Cham­pi­on and Ro­tax Se­nior Class points leader and a nine-year par­tic­i­pant in the sport, Ma­hon said "I am ea­ger to show­case the skill, ded­i­ca­tion, and spir­it of our na­tion and that of our mo­tor­sport com­mu­ni­ty. This op­por­tu­ni­ty not on­ly high­lights my per­son­al jour­ney in mo­tor­sport but al­so serves as an in­spi­ra­tion for as­pir­ing rac­ers in Trinidad and To­ba­go, demon­strat­ing that with hard work and pas­sion, reach­ing the world stage is pos­si­ble."

The young­sters are un­der no il­lu­sion and are aware the com­pe­ti­tion will be tough. They are the un­der­dogs in a sport where most na­tions have pur­pose-built kart­ing fa­cil­i­ties to host train­ing and com­pe­ti­tions.

Lo­cal­ly, com­pe­ti­tions are fa­cil­i­tat­ed on a makeshift kart track at the Waller­field In­ter­na­tion­al Race­way us­ing ropes and plas­tic bar­ri­ers. Notwith­stand­ing these lim­i­ta­tions, Ma­hon and Shar­ma be­lieve that they can rep­re­sent the red, white and black well.

“It’s far from ide­al, but that has nev­er stopped the re­gion from ex­celling in all sorts of sport­ing en­deav­ours”, said Ma­hon.