Guest Driver

I hadn't been expecting to race in the Round 3 of the Crail Winter series, as Ros is currently working down south somewhere, so when I got a text from Grant offering me a drive in his kart, I was pleasantly surprised. I couldn't go on Saturday (work), but Sunday was free, so off to Crail I went.

As I hadn't raced for a few months I expected to be a bit rusty and in race 1 I really struggled to keep up with the top 3, in a kart that's among the fastest in the country:-( However, when Grant took over for the second half of the race, he fared little better and just managed to take 3rd at the flag. A quick discussion ensued, and we decided to change to the 2nd string engines, as his 'big' engines have now done over 70 hours, and also to change to an older set of tyres as the kart was suffering from too much rear grip.

Race 2 was much better and I was able to pull away from most of the field, except Chris in the Milwalk kart. Chris has always been one of the top 2 drivers, but his partner, whilst being good, just didn't have that last little bit that marks a great driver from a simply good one. But this year, Chirs has teamed up with Alan Kirkcaldy which makes them, in my eyes, the strongest team on the grid. Chris was maybe 2-3 tenths quicker than me, and when Grant took over, he was roughly the same behind Alan. Race 3 followed the same pattern to give us a third and 2 second places, which put us second overall on the day.

Grant's kart is very different to drive when compared to the Wright R2 I normally race, but by the end of my stint in Race 3, I felt I was getting more "in tune" with it and the times agreed. In race 1, I'd been just over 2/10ths slower than Grant - Race 2 it was down to 1.5/10ths and in race 3 we were almost identical (I can't say for certain as Grant cleared the lap timer before I could check, but I trust him :-))

So Milwalk "clean sweeped" the races with us second and Michael in the Panther racing kart in third.

I'm now in the process of trying to get a test in a Formula Blue (2 stroke) kart sometime in the next month.