WSK Promotion: Italy's Career-Making Grids

Ask any factory team manager where the season really starts and the answer is not a world championship round. It is a February weekend at Lonato or La Conca, on a WSK grid stacked with every works driver, every ambitious junior and every F1 academy scout in Europe.

Origins

WSK Promotion was built by Italian promoter Luca De Donno, who remains its president today. The company staged its first international series in 2006 and marked its twentieth year of racing in 2025, opening that anniversary season at La Conca. From the start the formula was simple: professional organisation, live timing and TV production, and calendars dense enough that teams could base an entire European programme around them.

The crown jewel arrived in 2010. The WSK Super Master Series, run across Italy's best circuits in late winter and early spring, quickly became the unofficial world championship of pre-season form. Around it De Donno layered the Champions Cup season-opener, the summer Euro Series and the autumn Final Cup — a near-year-round pipeline of high-stakes racing.

How it shaped karting

WSK changed the economics of top-level karting. Because every serious team races there, the series effectively sets the market: junior drivers are signed, promoted and dropped on WSK results. The alumni list reads like a modern F1 grid — Max Verstappen, Antonio Giovinazzi and Kimi Antonelli all won WSK Super Master titles before reaching Formula 1.

• Full class coverage: from Mini U10 and Mini Gr.3 through OK-Junior and OK to KZ2 — the whole ladder on one weekend.
• Venue power: Lonato, Sarno, La Conca, Adria and Franciacorta, the circuits that make Italy karting's heartland.
• Density of talent: a Mini final at WSK routinely fields more future single-seater drivers than most national championships combined.

The series also became the reference point that FIA Karting promoters and rivals such as RGMMC's Champions of the Future measure themselves against: whoever wins the WSK winter enters the official season as favourite.

Today

WSK Promotion still runs the sport's deepest independent calendar: Champions Cup, Super Master Series, Euro Series and Final Cup, all in Italy and all packed with international entries from more than 50 nations in peak years. For young drivers it remains the fastest way to be noticed; for teams it is the test bench where chassis and engine development is proven before world championship rounds.

Every WSK round sits in our calendar, and the results feed heavily into our OK, OKJ, KZ2 and Mini 60 rankings — where a strong Super Master campaign moves a driver more than almost anything outside FIA competition. Browse the driver database and you will find WSK form lines under nearly every name that matters.