New Chapter for Gore as Strong Pace Shines on AKM Debut
Swedish-Australian karting driver Axel “Axeman” Gore began an exciting new chapter in his 2026 season at Franciacorta, making his competitive debut with AKM Motorsport at the opening round of the WSK Final Cup from August 26–30.
Following his recent move to AKM Motorsport, Gore joined the Italian squad in the highly competitive OKN-J category, beginning a new phase of his development after previously competing with Team Driver.
The transition immediately showed promise. Gore impressed the team with his speed during testing ahead of the event, quickly adapting to his new surroundings and demonstrating strong pace as the partnership began to take shape.
That speed continued into practice at Franciacorta before a challenging qualifying session left Gore P12 out of 24 drivers in his group, giving him work to do through the qualifying heats.
In a wet opening heat, Gore made an outstanding start from P15, overtaking four karts on the opening lap to move into P11. Unfortunately, his charge was cut short when contact from another driver on Lap 2 ended his race prematurely.
Heat 2 brought more frustration. After another strong start and while battling his way forward, Gore was hit from behind on Lap 3, resulting in a second consecutive DNF and leaving the young Swedish-Aussie on the back foot for the remainder of the weekend.
Gore again showed his ability to move forward in Heat 3, climbing from P15 to P11 on track before a bumper penalty relegated him to P16 in the final classification.
The fourth and final heat saw another strong opening phase as Gore worked his way up to P14. However, when another driver spun and became stranded in the middle of the circuit, Gore was forced onto the grass to avoid the incident, dropping all the way to P23 and denying him another opportunity to capitalise on his pace.
Despite the difficult results, Sunday provided perhaps the clearest indication yet of Gore's potential with his new team. Gore was immediately among the fastest drivers in the morning warm-up, lapping inside the top five before carrying that speed into the pre-final.
With the two earlier DNFs leaving him P29 on the 36-kart grid, Gore faced a considerable recovery task. An unusual start, with the field not fully grouped together as racing got underway, caught Gore out before further contact at Turn 2 dropped him towards the rear.
From there, however, the underlying speed was impossible to miss. Gore produced lap times among the fastest two or three drivers on circuit as he chased the field back down and began another recovery drive. An off while fighting his way forward eventually brought his race to an end on Lap 9, concluding a weekend where the final results ultimately failed to reflect the pace shown.
While Franciacorta proved challenging, Gore's first competitive weekend with AKM provided plenty of encouragement. His immediate testing speed, repeated strong starts and front-running pace on the final day demonstrated the potential of the new partnership, with the focus now firmly on putting together a clean weekend and converting that speed into results.
Axel Gore:
“I'm really excited to have joined AKM and we've had a great start working together. The speed was there straight away in testing and again during the weekend, especially on Sunday when we were one of the quickest karts on track. It was a frustrating weekend with the DNFs and incidents, but there are a lot of positives to take from it. We know we have the pace, so now it's about putting a clean weekend together and giving ourselves the chance to fight at the front."
