A busy week

Sunday was the latest round of the Crail ProKart endurance series, and being in December, it was wet and cold. Ros had just had his engines back from servicing, so we hoped to do well. We were really off the pace in the 2 practice sessions and in race 1. This was compounded when I finished the race 0.3kg underweight, meaning we took a 10 lap penalty into race 2. Not that it mattered, Ros had a fairly big off and bent a stub axle after 20mins. So for the last race we were starting last - we set the kart back to the way it was on our last visit to Crail, and it worked! I went from last to 4th in my 30 min sint and Ros consolidated our position. One day we'll get it right:-)

Monday was the annual Cash for Kids Endurance race at ScotKart in Cambuslang. I was asked to drive for a new team called F Sport (expect to see some announcements about F Sport in the press over the coming months) and I got Dom (the young one) to join me with F Sport MD Ian, and his son Euan. The competition at his event is always tough and so it proved. Extreme Karting in Falkirk sent through a strong team who all are involved at their circuit. Howerver, we all drove pretty well and took the win by just over a lap. This may sound a lot, but a quick lap is around 29 - 30 seconds so in 2 hours, it's less that 0.5%. The whole evening was a great success and raised 18,000 for Cash for Kids.


Tuesday was the competitive one, again at ScotKart Cambuslang. - Dom and I were joined by Niel and Fraser Purdie to make up ITW racing in the final of the Indusrty Challenge. All of the competing 15 teams had won their respective events so we expected it be be tough. The biggest issue was that, with most teams running a fairly quick pace, overtaking was going to be very difficult. We quallified on pole with Neil taking the honours with a 29.72. However, the 1st Extreme driver got past him on lap 1 and Neil chased him for almost the full half hour of his stint. Then it was Dom's turn - he put in a superb 30 mins, posting the fastest lap of the night (29.28) to put us in the lead. Fraser held the lead throughout his session and I finished off with us winning by a lap and a half (~45 seconds). On Monday we managed 209 laps in two hours - Tuesday was 219! - We had a better kart, allthough we had a scare when the right rear rim split about 10 mins into my session. The replacement kart didn't want to turn right, but was great on lefts, so overall it was similar. As real comparisson, Dom went 3/10ths quicker on Tuesday and I managed 4/10ths over Monday's best time. So a busy week and probably the last before 2006. I've just watched the last FPA race from Brands Hatch, and I didn't even get a mention, despite gaining 3 places in the last 4 laps - Bummer!