RELAIS ESTIVAL · Course Race⏱ 42 min

Twenty-one teams took to the 964-metre Karting Paul Ricard circuit on 19 August 2026 for a 42-minute endurance race, delivering a tightly contested battle from start to finish. Each team completed three pit stops, making strategy and consistency as decisive as outright pace.

Tié Pilote ou Tié Pas Pilote (kart #25) took the overall victory with 36 laps completed, crossing the line with a margin equivalent to lap 40 over their nearest rival. The winning team's performance was built on exceptional consistency: a median lap time of 1:01.185 — the best pure pace in the field — and a lap-time standard deviation of just 0.48 seconds across the entire race, the lowest of any analysed team. All four stints were rated stable, with median times ranging from 1:01.118 to 1:01.223 — a remarkably flat pace curve over 42 minutes.

TOMUS (kart #16) finished second, also on 36 laps, 12.7 seconds behind. They set the fastest lap of the race — 1:00.052 — but their overall median of 1:01.754 ranked them only third in pure pace, the result of significant variation between stints (standard deviation: 1.20 s). Relays alternated between fast (stints 1 and 3, both accelerating) and slower (stints 2 and 4, median around 1:02.0). The speed was undeniable; the consistency was not.

Peinture Figurative Racing 1 (kart #8) claimed third place with 35 laps, 25.2 seconds off the lead. They posted the second-best pure pace in the race (median 1:01.691), but a similar alternating stint pattern — fast odds, slower evens — cost them a lap against the top two. MATTHIAS (kart #13) and Team Senna (kart #26) completed the top five, both finishing 36 laps and ranked 6th and 5th respectively in pure pace, demonstrating that tactical regularity can more than compensate for a modest raw time.

Among the notable contrasts, AGM Racing (kart #12) finished 17th despite holding the 4th-best pure pace in the analysed field — a clear indication that race incidents or time lost outside of clean laps proved costly. At the other end of the spectrum, APATINE (kart #11) finished 12th despite ranking only 18th in pure pace, suggesting effective pit stop management relative to their ultimate lap time potential.

The sharpest degradation of the race was recorded by GERIN (kart #18), whose second stint saw pace drop by 0.52 seconds per lap — the steepest decline of the field. They ultimately finished 18th on 34 laps.

Key takeaways for teams: At Karting Paul Ricard, this race confirmed that a stable, moderate rhythm — like Tié Pilote ou Tié Pas Pilote's 1:01.185 median held flat across all four stints — can be more valuable than isolated fast laps. Teams with high between-stint variability (standard deviation above 1.0 s) were unable to convert their peak pace into results. Limiting degradation within each stint and maintaining a consistent pit stop window (all top teams stopped 3 times) are the two levers that most clearly separated the finishers.