One of the country’s longest running kart meetings, the annual Blossom Sprint in Hawke’s Bay, just keeps on keeping on, KartSport Hawke’s Bay hosting the 47th at its track at Roy’s Hill near Hastings over the September 06-07 weekend.

“The 40th anniversary one just seemed like yesterday, yet here we are at number 47,” says KartSport New Zealand Development and Administration manager Robert Hutton. “In no time at all we will be getting ready to celebrate the 50th.”

With its traditional first-weekend-in-September date the Blossom meeting heralds a new season with a unique two-day format which sees drivers from all over New Zealand races round the 687m track run in the clockwise direction on Saturday then anti-clockwise direction on Sunday.

The meeting also has its own distinctive race format with each class getting four heats using pre-determined grids with points from all four counted and carried over on Saturday, and four heats on Sunday with three running predetermined grids and the fourth with a starting grid based on points scored up until that point.

Once those class races have been run and won each driver’s worst performance over the eight class heats is dropped and class winners and place-getters are finally decided.

All the key sprint championship classes are being catered for this weekend including the new Cadet ROK and Vortex Mini ROK classes introduced earlier this year.