​In a media brief released today from the team, Grabko Grand Prix made the major announcement that they had secured the services of Erkin Bour and Daniel Svensson away from EB Karting and Lilleman Racing, respectively.

Both championship winning drivers have been signed on one year deals, and the atmosphere in the team was absolutely buzzing after the announcement, which was made at the Gothenburg Gokartcenter in Torslanda.

Team Principal, Dan Grabko, had this to say to the gathered press, "We couldn't be more excited or more proud to announce our first team expansion in this way. Securing the services of drivers of this caliber just shows the ambition levels this team has. In Erkin and Daniel we've got two of the best karting talents in the region in the team. With these guys in racing seats, Grabko Grand Prix is looking to be a real force to reckon with in all the competitions we enter."

​In the aftermath of the first round feature final race, Adde Motorsport submitted a protest to the race results, and after Championship stewards reviewed the data. It was found that kart 7's power unit, that had forced them to retire after 10 laps, had failed before Voric's joker lap incidents. The decision thus went in their favor, and the team was awarded 5th place, knocking Modin Motorsport, Grabko Grand Prix, and Haraldsson Autosport all down a position. It meant one less Championship point for the 3 affected teams and 3 more points for Adde. The decision was not protested by the affected teams, as upon review of the data all teams agreed it was conclusive.

So it was a focused Grabko Grand Prix that entered the paddock for this week's testing session.

Finally the moment the team have been preparing for and longing after all Summer long had come. It was time to kick off the 2016/17 Gokartcentralen Open GP Electric Gokart Championship, the Swedish West Coast's premier electric karting series!

A lot of controversy had blown up in the media in the weeks building up to this first round of the championship, with many of the teams having reacted negatively to the changes made to the circuit, the new adjusted completion format, and most prevalently, the driving characteristics of the new racing karts.

To their credit, the series leadership and circuit engineers had taken a lot of the commentary on board, and had worked exhaustively leading up to race day to remap the the power units to squeeze out as much top speed as possible within the limitations of the entire package. Racing drivers are a simple and single-minded breed, they don't want to hear excuses, be they valid or not, they just want performance, performance, performance!

​It was a dark and stormy night...

But, unfortunately it wasn't stormy enough. Rain earlier in the day failed to last past early afternoon, a disappointment for most of the fans and about half the driver field, for which the prospect of wet race conditions was an appetizing one. They would have to settle for a couple of puddles at the end of the long front straight, leading into the entry of the flat out turn 1.

In the team's final pre-season outing before the start of the Gokartcentralen Open GP Electric Gokart Championship, Grabko Grand Prix made another guest entry in the Team 13 Gothenburg Gokartcenter Summer Cup, this time in the decisive 6th and last round of the 2016 series.

Continuing to develop their networking partnerships, the young team again travelled with top outfit EB Karting, who were fighting for a top 3 finish in the competition despite having missed the July round of the series.

The series officials had moved the time of the race up an hour, taking into account the rapidly decreasing daylight hours as Fall truly had arrived in western Sweden. So 4:30pm was set for the drivers meeting, with a scheduled 5:00pm start for the first session of qualifying.