RELAIS ESTIVAL · Course Race⏱ 19 min

Twenty-two teams lined up on the 964-metre Karting Paul Ricard circuit on August 21, 2026 for a 19-minute endurance race. All 22 starters completed the event, producing a tightly contested battle across the full field.

LES MINOTS (kart #14) took the victory with 18 laps completed, crossing the line a full lap ahead of second-placed TOMUS (kart #2), who finished 17 laps. PLANARD CPR (kart #20) rounded out the podium in third, also on 18 laps but 7.366 seconds behind the winner. LES PINK LADIES (kart #21) claimed fourth, just 0.4 seconds further back at 7.766 seconds from LES MINOTS. RAYAN (kart #22) and FREE DRIVERS (kart #5) completed the top six, both on 18 laps, respectively 26.7 and 43.9 seconds adrift. Every classified team made exactly 3 pit stops during the race.

The fastest lap of the entire race was set by LES MINOTS at 59.502 seconds, the only team to dip below the 59.6-second mark. TOMUS replied with a 59.631, and PLANARD CPR posted a 59.819 to complete an all-sub-60-second top-three on outright lap times.

The pace analysis reveals an interesting gap between on-track speed and final classification. TOMUS held the best pure pace of the race with a median race rhythm of 1:00.155, placing them first in pure-speed rankings — yet they finished second on the road. Their second stint was particularly strong (median 59.923, regularity of 0.61 s), after a slightly less consistent opening stint (standard deviation 1.26 s). LES MINOTS, by contrast, ranked second in pure pace with a median of 1:00.388, and delivered a remarkably sharp second stint: median 59.908, with a regularity of just 0.59 s — the tightest of any stint analysed. Both teams showed a clear positive trend across their stints, each improving by around 0.17 s/lap as their stints progressed.

LES PINK LADIES deserve special mention for consistency: their overall standard deviation of 0.66 s was the lowest among the top six, with a rock-steady second stint (0.48 s). They ranked third in pure pace (median 1:00.603) and converted that into a solid fourth place. FREE DRIVERS were a model of regularity across the race, posting virtually identical median times in both stints (1:01.192 and 1:01.191) with a consistency figure of 0.63 s — rewarded with sixth place and sixth in pure-pace rankings, a perfect alignment of speed and result.

Further down the order, KARTOON (kart #26) showed the highest variability of the analysed runners (overall standard deviation 1.28 s, peaking at 1.56 s in stint one), which likely explains their eighth-place finish despite a seventh-best pure pace. MECHE (kart #4) is the standout underperformer relative to speed: ninth-best pure pace on the grid, but only 15th at the flag — a gap of six positions that the data flags as the race's most notable strategic or pace-management imbalance. Conversely, LF1 (kart #24) outperformed their pure-pace ranking (15th) to finish 12th, suggesting effective pit-stop execution.

Key takeaways for teams: On Karting Paul Ricard's 964-metre layout, managing tyre consistency across stints proved more decisive than raw single-lap speed — TOMUS had the fastest race pace but LES MINOTS converted superior regularity and a faster absolute lap into the win. Teams with high within-stint variability (above 1.2 s standard deviation) consistently lost positions relative to their pace potential. Improving stint-to-stint consistency, rather than chasing peak lap times, appears to be the primary performance lever on this circuit.