Round 4 of the Champions of the Future Academy landed at Whilton Mill with the U10 season standings on the line, and our driver Benjamin Sljivar’s day didn’t start the way anyone wanted. It finished exactly the way it needed to.
Qualifying went wrong fast. A lap-two mechanical failure dropped Benjamin to 10th before he’d had a chance to show his pace, a tough position to be in against a U10 field this competitive. Two 6th-place heat finishes rebuilt it, steady and controlled rather than forced. Then came the final: P4, delivered under real pressure against the fastest U10 drivers in the country.
That P4 was worth more than the four points it looks like on a results sheet. It confirmed Benjamin 2nd overall in the U10 Champions of the Future Academy championship. COFTA is a level playing field by design, drivers run on pooled, fairly-drawn equipment, so a high finish reflects the driver rather than the budget behind him. Finishing 2nd in a series built that way is a genuine marker, and it’s exactly the kind of result that gets a young driver noticed further up the grid.
The recovery is the part worth paying attention to. A lap-two failure could have written the day off. Instead it became the foundation for a top-four finish and a runner-up championship spot, the kind of composure under pressure that doesn’t always make the highlight reel but matters more than most results that do.
None of it happens in isolation. Kart Smart kept the car sharp all weekend, and Lewis Malin‘s coaching was behind the composure that turned a rough qualifying session into a recovery drive instead of a write-off. Backing from Parolin, Sparco, Uniprolaptimer and Sana Racing keeps campaigns like this one on track race after race.
2nd overall in the U10 COFTA championship, built on a final that turned a bad qualifying into the best kind of statement. We’ll be back at the next round.
Full round-by-round results and the current championship standings are on Benjamin’s own site.
