The 360 drivers entered in the 2019 Rotax MAX Challenge Grand Finals competed in their first Qualifying Heats this Wednesday at the Circuito Internazionale Napoli of Sarno, Italy.

After a busy day of practice spent at tuning his Sodikart / Rotax material the best way possible, Jace Denmark-Gessel carried out a fastly-improving pace through his last Non-Qualifying Practice session in the odd-numbered group of the Senior class, followed by Qualifying where his lap time performance came down to 1:00.024, more than 0.4 seconds faster than his last run on track yesterday.

Put into Group B, the Team USA representative was heading for his opening Qualifying Heat with confidence. From the sixth row of the grid, he took an efficient start and quickly fought his way up the field, overtaking four drivers in the openings laps of the race. Having to cope with fierce opposition, he lost a bit of ground in the second part of the race but eventually recovered up to 10th place while setting the third-fastest lap of the 10-lap heat!

“Let’s say it’s a rather positive start for my series of heats. It wasn’t always easy in the midfield, some of the drivers out there like to put on a fight but we managed to get a good result to keep building our confidence upon, especially as we were the third-fastest on track! Still, a bit of work to do on the carburation but the pace is improving every day and that’s we’re aiming for!”, said Jace after his opening heat.

Jace’s journey at Sarno continues on Thursday with his last two Qualifying Heats from 12:11 am (CET). You can follow his progress in his first Rotax MAX Challenge Grand Finals with Team USA here.

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  • Text: Guillaume Alvarez
  • Photo: Alex Vernardis / The RaceBox