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Snap-on Stars of Karting Announces Replacement Florida Venue for 2008 Opener |
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Monday, 11 February 2008 |
The Snap-on Stars of Karting announced today that the Ocala Gran Prix facility will host the opening round of the 2008 series. The site is the replacement venue for what was to be a temporary circuit in the Orlando area. The event will still take place on the originally schedule weekend of April 4-6 and serve as the first round in the East Division of the Snap-on Stars of Karting. A link to the host track website is here; http://www.ocalagranprix.com
Unfortunately, the Stars of Karting organization was presented with a last minute decision that left them scrambling to replace the highly anticipated theme park that was to kick off the year. An exhaustive search to find an alternative quality site that would support a temporary circuit was, unfortunately, never found and in the interest of time the decision was made to focus on permanent tracks in the area.
"We looked at every possible option to try to duplicate what our original vision was to start the 2008 season. But, we just could not come up with anything that was available when we needed it or that was a safe alternative with a quality surface that could support these karts at these speeds. We are simply out of time so our focus of course has to shift to a permanent circuit. We looked at all of our options and there were scheduling conflicts, government restrictions, operational issues, or unacceptable risk with almost every location we looked at," stated Series President Paul Zalud.
"In the end Ocala is the best choice because of its proximity to the original location of the Orlando area and that people have already made travel plans to fly into and travel there. Ocala also went out of its way to make the facility available to us on the weekend originally scheduled. It is also hoped that this will help many of the teams as they will be on site within two weeks of our event helping to ease some logistics and costs on their behalf."
As a gesture of goodwill, the Snap-on Stars of Karting will be waiving all parking fees at this event only. The track configuration will be named in the near future.
The Stars of Karting would like to thank all of those who offered to support us on this weekend especially JC Courrages at Monticello Karting and Motor Club for the offer of his facilities.
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