Leo Da Silva Books Team Canada’s First RMCGF Ticket of 2026 in Texas!

The first member of Team Canada for the prestigious Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals is official as Leo Da Silva has won his way in at the RMC Winter Trophy in Houston, Texas, this past weekend.

It was a very eventful RMC Winter Trophy, with extremely cold weather throughout the entire two-weekend event, along with a Texas State of Emergency forcing officials to postpone race day two from last Sunday to this Friday, creating a triple-header championship weekend.

Everyone persevered, including the Canadians who made up at least half of the entries at the event.

Da Silva secured his ticket as the Vice-Champion in Rotax Junior, as the overall champion was too old to accept the ticket.

The breakout weekends for Da Silva saw him take a dominant victory in the rain by over 30 seconds in Race 1. He could only manage P5 in Race 2 before returning to the podium in Race 3 in third place. In the championship final race, Da Silva recovered from a tough qualifying effort to work his way back to the front and battle amongst the leaders. Fading a bit at the end, he crossed in fourth place and came up just short of the title, but nonetheless, the highest eligible driver in the field, and celebrated with his second invitation to the Rotax Grand Finals.

In addition to Da Silva winning his ticket, Canadians were all over the podium in each round, and many were in the championship hunt right to Sunday’s final checkered flag.

• Antoine Bazinet (Pfaff/Gillard) started the event off with back-to-back podiums in his first race outside of Canada, taking home a pair of third-place trophies in Rotax Junior.
• Yousef Adi (JHDD/Kart Republic) had a spectacular Winter Trophy, capping it off with the win in Mini Max in R4, adding to a P2 finish in R2 and finishing the championship ranked P2.
• Saving his best for last, Lincoln Lima (Prime/BirelART) notched a podium on the final day of competition, finishing P2 in Mini Max.
• Canadians were all over the Rotax Senior division during the Winter Trophy, but it wasn’t until Sunday that we finally got on the podium. After an insane race and the dust settled, Rayan Ghandour (REM/Kosmic), another driver making his Senior debut, and Ryan Maxwell (Prime/OTK) wound up P2 and P3.
• In Masters Max, Dominic Legrand (BirelART) had two podium finishes, both P3, while Noel Dowler (RPM/OTK) came so close to victory on Championship Sunday, only to be denied late in the race and having to settle for P2.
• Canadian drivers made up all but two of the entries in Rotax DD2, but those two were a thorn to our drivers all weekend long, taking all four victories.
  • Gianluca Savaglio (REM/Kosmic) took home three podium finishes throughout the weekend to finish as Vice-Champion.
  • Lucas Pernod (PSL/BirelART) had two podiums and finished P3 in the championship.
  • Alexis Baillargeon (Plateau/OTK), who moved up to Senior this year, started his season with a third-place podium in Rotax DD2 in Race 4.
  • Matthew Taskinen (CRG) was also on the podium in Race 1.

With the first qualifying event of the season complete, Canadians are already locked in on Rotax Grand Finals.

We heard this weekend that the Canadian qualifying events are being finalized very soon and will have those dates available as soon as we know.

In addition, Race Rotax has two more international qualifying series this summer, the RMC Trophy Final and the RMC Americas Trophy. Learn more about those on http://racerotax.com.