Sri Lanka’s Yevan Ranasinghe David emerges cadet champ at X30 Southeast Asia

Yevan , a 10-year old Sri Lankan who is an emerging racing star and is currently residing in Singapore, emerged overall champion of the cadet category of the X30 Southeast Asia Karting Championship 2017 at the Sepang Gokart Circuit in Malaysia last week.

The young kart racing prodigy went into the sixth and final round of the championship at the popular track in Sepang with a formidable 10-point lead ahead of Singaporean Christian Ho and a 22-point lead over Cui Yan Pu and Akshay Bohra who race for Singapore and China respectively.

Winning the final race could have added up to 46 points to the overall tally of the winner, so all five drivers at the top of the table were pushing for podium finishes in search of the top spot.

The weekend had a challenging start with Yevan battling illness but he persevered with testing and practice.

The qualifying round did not go as planned for Yevan and he was placed ninth, but managed to finish in fifth position in Heat 1 and ninth in Heat 2, meaning he could start the pre-final in sixth position.

Yevan finished the pre-final in fourth position and needed to be among the top 5 of the final to secure the title. The final saw Yevan fall back to fifth before fighting back within two laps to take the lead, but a few errors cost him the lead and forced him to drop to third.

Yevan held his third place position until he challenged with a brave move to take second with one corner to go for the finish. He went too wide on the exit however and fell back to third, but the podium finish was more than enough for him to win the X30 Southeast title by 21 points.

The victory also earned him a free entry to the IAME Karting World finals which will be held in Le Mans, France on 14 and 15 October.

Yevan is the first Sri Lankan cadet driver to win an international championship and is looking forward to making his country proud by winning the prestigious World Championships in October.

Yevan’s younger brother Yevin, who is the youngest driver on the grid at age 7, is also participating in his first year of racing, and finished 19th out of 20 drivers and within a second of the fastest lap times.