Kiwi karters Urwin leads by example

New Zealand has been sending teams to the Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals since the inaugural event in Puerto Rico in 2000 and this week five drivers – Josh Hart, Matthew Hamilton, Andy Schofield, Hamish Cross and Niki Urwin – are at the La Conca International Karting Circuit in Italy contesting the 11th annual multi-day event.

Like the 59 other countries at the 2010 event, New Zealand will be represented by the drivers who qualified via a national Rotax Max Challenge series or event.

The big difference this year is that one of the New Zealand drivers, Tauranga’s Niki Urwin, is a paraplegic.

Urwin lost the use of his legs (not to mention his body from the chest down) in a accident at a motocross meeting in Australia in 2002 but took up kart racing as soon as he practically could afterwards.

“I’m knew I needed to do something, ” he explains. “I’m a competitive person and I had tried karts and looked at a change of direction when I was 14. At that point though motocross won out.”

Since then Urwin, now 32, and his specially-adapted kart (which uses locally-developed hand controls for the throttle and brake) have become a fixture on the national kartsport scene, finishing fourth in class at KartSport New Zealand’s Sprint Nationals title meeting in 2004, fourth in class in the Rotax Max Challenge series in 2005 and second in the new Masters (32 years and over) category this year.

To earn his place on the New Zealand team he had to beat a number of top able-bodied drivers including longtime Auckland kart and Speedway racer Steven Currie.

In the end he not only finished second in the Masters category (earning him a place on the team going to La Conca) he also finished third overall behind reigning New Zealand Rotax Max Heavy class champion Hamish Cross and top Auckland driver Shane Hodgson in the Rotax Max Heavy class.

Before his entry to the Grand Finals meeting was accepted, however, Urwin had to provide the organisers and the sport’s world-side governing body, the CIK-FIA, a letter from KartSport New Zealand medical officer Dr Rhod Murray, and proof that, in the event of an accident, he could get out of his kart unaided.

Having practiced it before, the latter proved to be a formality; in fact when they were making the video to send to the CIK-FIA Urwin says even he was surprised how easily and quickly he could pull himself out.

New Zealand drivers have put together a typically gutsy record at Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals over the years with Dale Verrall carding a fourth in class at the inaugural event in Puerto Rico in 2000, Earl Bamber finishing third in the Junior Final at Lanzarote in the Canary Islands in 2004 and Matthew Hamilton finishing third in the Senior Final in Egypt last year.

Both Hamilton – who moves to the DD2 class this year – and Senior class contestant Josh Hart have represented New Zealand at previous Grand Finals and like Cross (who joins Urwin in the DD2 Masters class) they are multi-time New Zealand and Island champions at home.

Young Cambridge driver Andy Schofield has a harder row to hoe in the Junior Max class but, again, he has done the hard yards at home, his latest win in the 100cc Yamaha Junior class at the North Island championships over Labour Weekend.

And Urwin? How is he expected to rate against some of the world’s best Masters class kart drivers.

“It’s going to be tough for me, no doubt about it, but,” he stresses,” I’m not going there to be the token handicapped guy at the back. I’m a racer. I’m going there to race!