ROTARY MATIN · ENDURANCE Race

Eighteen teams took to the 1,200-metre circuit at Dunois Kart in Lutz-en-Dunois on 19 September 2026 for a full-field endurance race. At the chequered flag, it was ALPINARD (kart #12) who took the top step of the podium, completing 82 laps and holding off HAPPY BIRTHDAY (kart #7) by 12.454 seconds. C15 (kart #9) rounded out the podium, a further 34 seconds adrift.

The fastest lap of the race was set by HAPPY BIRTHDAY with a time of 1:03.165. Yet despite holding the best pure pace — a median race rhythm of 1:04.033 — the team ultimately had to settle for second place. The gap in raw speed between the top three was razor-thin: C15 posted the second-best median rhythm at 1:04.227, while ALPINARD sat third on pace at 1:04.336.

What ultimately separated ALPINARD from their rivals was consistency. With a standard deviation of just 0.74 seconds across their stints, they were the most regular team in the field. All nine of their stints returned a "stable" tendency, meaning they never surrendered time through degradation over the course of a run. That relentless regularity over 82 laps proved decisive against a HAPPY BIRTHDAY side capable of quicker individual laps but whose rhythm across seven stints showed slightly more variance (0.94 s).

FERNANDO ALONSI (kart #11) finished fourth, one lap down, ahead of COOP BONNEVAL 1 (kart #23) by 1.253 seconds — a tight fight for fourth within the same lap count of 81. MUSET MOTROSPORT (kart #20) and JEAN ALESI (kart #14) completed the top seven, also on 81 laps.

Further down the order, COOP BONNEVAL 2 (kart #5) illustrated one of the race's most notable pace swings: their sixth stint saw a degradation of 1.14 seconds per lap, the sharpest of any team in the field, before they recovered with a superb final stint of 16 laps at a median of 1:04.186 to finish eighth on 78 laps.

KIWA SPEED RACING (kart #26) presents an interesting strategic note: ranked 10th overall on 75 laps, they finished four places ahead of where their pure pace would have placed them (14th by median rhythm of 1:08.761), suggesting effective pit-stop sequencing. Conversely, PISSIER NEGOCE (kart #27) showed the 11th-best pace but finished 16th overall, an outcome that points to time lost elsewhere in the race.

At the back of the field, LA FAMILLE (kart #18) completed 67 laps and LES ESCARGOTS (kart #13) 62 laps — 20 laps behind the winners. All 18 starters saw the flag, making this a clean race across the board, with every team recording 9 pit-stop passages.

Key takeaways for teams: At Dunois Kart, ALPINARD's victory demonstrates that consistent, degradation-free stints can outweigh raw lap-time speed over a long race. HAPPY BIRTHDAY had the quickest kart on track but lost the race in the margins. Any team carrying pace but conceding time through mid-stint degradation — as FERNANDO ALONSI did in stints 6 and 7 (losing up to 0.62 s/lap) — should focus on tyre and kart management. Meanwhile, the gap between PISSIER NEGOCE's on-track pace and their final position underlines that pure speed counts for nothing if lost time accumulates outside the lap-time data.