The Racers Edge

At the age of 40, I decided to go motor racing - The ultimate mid life crisis.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

A New Record


But in all the wrong ways. Today's endurance was bit different as there were 12 folk, all doing the 90 minutes on their own. As is the norm for January in Scotland, it was pretty cold and the track while not fully wet, was still damp enough to keep lap times at least 10 seconds the wrong side of a minute. After quallifying Stuart Gray was on pole with me second and then Brett, Dominic and Michael all seperated by a few tenths. As part of the endurance race , we get to do a warm up lap before the start - the brakes just wouldn't work well - I put it down to them cooling down post quallifying and managed to make a decent start maintaining second. Given that the track was surely going to get quicker throughout the race, I decided to do my mandatory pit stop on lap 1. I nearly wiped out the tyres on the way into the pits, but convinced myself that I just needed to push the pedal harder. So back out and into the first hairpin - when I say into, I mean literally, as I ended up buried in the tyres. I then nursed the kart back to the pits and took out one of the spares. Kart 2 was pretty good, and I was running a good pace, untill the right engine seized solid after about 45 laps. Kart 3 was great through the right hand corners but was really slow through the left handers because, as I found out a few laps latter, the brakes were binding on during lefts - they eventually failed , again into the hairpin ( a big braking area!). So back to the pits for kart number 4 - I only got to the pit exit, coz the right hand engine was not stopping when you took your foot off the throtle - probaly a broken return spring. So finally kart number 5 - It stopped well, and went left and right, but was really slow - Everyone else in the race did their fastest lap sometime in the last few laps (75-84). I did mine on lap 44. Michael also had 4 karts, so it's not just me. Five karts in an hour and a half - beat that! Raceland are due to get the new 320cc single engined karts in April - Can't come soon enough. A crap day only made bearable by the drive I had on Saturday in Ferarri F430 F1!

2 Comments:

At 11:37 am, Blogger Al said...

Nice motor.

You wearing gel in that picture?

 
At 9:36 am, Blogger Unknown said...

It was just the excitement of driving a Ferrari - Honest:-)

 

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