Tom Joyner knows what it takes to be the world’s best karting driver.
And the Braintree postal worker hopes that experience will help him to a second global title this weekend at the CIK-FIA KF Class World Championships at La Conca in Italy.
Joyner won the world title in the KF Class – which is considered as the Formula One of kart racing – in Bahrain two years ago.
That earned him a place at the FIA, the world governing body for motorsport, end-of-year presentation ceremony alongside the then F1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel and current rising F1 star Max Verstappen.
So the 22-year-old, who works at the Royal Mail delivery office in Braintree, knows what it will take to wear the most prestigious crown in world karting for a second time.
He said: “When push comes to shove, I’m pretty relaxed about it as I’ve been there and done it before.
“In big races like this, you have a lot of pressure and it can build up for some people, but you learn how to handle it by having done it before.
“It’s a familiar scenario for me, so I’ll just have to see how it works this time.
“It’s fundamentally the same team that I won the World Championship with two years ago and we came close to winning it last year so I’m feeling relaxed about it all.”
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