Cumbrian Teenager Scores FIA Motorsport Games Gold for Team GB
British racer Jorge Edgar, from Cumbria, took victory in the Karting Sprint Jr. final at the FIA Motorsport Games in Spain, bringing home one of Team UK’s two gold medals from the event.
The third running of the FIA Motorsport Games was its largest ever, with more than 80 countries from around the world racing for gold, silver, and bronze medals in 28 different categories in this “Olympics of motorsport”.
Born out of the FIA GT Nations Cup in 2018, with a one-off race in GT cars, the FIA Motorsport Games began as a six-event tournament in Italy in 2019 based at Vallelunga. Le Castellet in France hosted the second and much broader event in 2022, with the Circuit Ricardo Tormo in Valencia, Spain the destination for 2024.
With each country’s participation determined by its designated national sporting authority (ASN), the UK team — organised by Motorsport UK — brought together racers across the age range and motorsport levels, including the esports category where it snared its first ever gold in 2022.
Among the drivers was a healthy contingent from our region including both of our young karting representatives, racing at the compact Aspar Circuit.
It was ten-year old Austin Gibson of Macclesfield up first in the Karting Mini category, and after a solid pair of heats starting and finishing well inside the top ten he came a cropper in the third with a coming-together with Rivaan Dev Preetham (India). Although able to get the kart going again, Gibson would finish in 18th and couldn’t make much of an impression in the final as he came home 14th.
Edgar, 14, had a similar experience in the Karting Sprint Jr category. The teenager made a decent run in the first two heats, again netting a pair of top tens, but then got caught in a pincer on the way into turn one in heat three and ended up running through the grass and down the order to 22nd. Subsequent penalties brought him back up to 16th.
With qualifying heat results aggregated, Edgar would start seventh and immediately got up onto the back of the lead pair of Zulfikari (Turkey) and van Rooiejn (Netherlands) as the trio broke away from the pack. Edgar hit the front on lap six and never looked back as the chasing pair scrapped and lost time, with the British driver claiming victory by almost a second.
Edgar’s gold medal performance came shortly before a second from James Owen in the Single Make GT – Ferrari Challenge event, making the second and third golds in games history from the the UK team after James Baldwin’s Esports win in 2022.
The 2024 games proved a successful one for the UK too as the team scored seven medals in total. There were bronze medals in the Karting Endurance for Andy O’Neill, Jack O’Neill, and Rhianna Purcocks, and in Formula 4 for Reza Seewooruthun, while the rally stages proved a fruitful silver-medal hunting ground too. Ernie Graham and Anna Graham, and Ben Mellors and Alex Lee (the latter from Hull), won second in Historic and Historic Gravel classes. Team captain Christoper Froggatt and James Cottingham also took silver in the GT category.
Overall the UK finished in fourth, just behind Italy which scored just three medals but all of them at gold. Host country Spain came top, just ahead of Germany.