Monaco Kart Cup - The Races

Race day dawned in the usual Monte Carlo way - sunny and warm and after an impromptu breakfast meeting to discuss strategy, it was off to the circuit for race 1.

Because I'd been quickest in qualifying, I was voted as the staring driver, and despite the appalling grid marshalling, I somehow managed to get onto row seven for the start. As I expected, it was bit chaotic with loads of contact, but over the course of my stint I picked up the pace, with a best of 52.686, and handed over to Bradley in 12th place.

Bradley had a great stint with no dramas and handed over to Chris still in 12th place, about half a lap down on the leaders. Chris was going well, consistently running mid 54s when suddenly on the large TV screens we could see Chris sitting in the middle of track, with his kart some 5m away - He quickly got to his feet and over the barriers, just avoiding being hit by kart no. 11.

Chris had been quickly catching a back marker, who had then been given the blue flag (to warn him that he should let the faster driver pass), which is what he appeared to be doing as he went wide on the chicane entry. However, as Chris got along side he turned into Chris and sent him into the exit barriers. This chicane is the fastest on the circuit, and as Chris ran along the protective plastic barriers he could see what was coming. About 20m past the chicane exit, the stairs from the swimming pool join main area, and Chris hit the concrete balustrade flat out - hence the reason he came out of the kart. We ran round the circuit to find a very sore Chris, and a very bent kart, and our race was over. We got the kart back to the mending tent and they managed to sort off straighten it out. I say sort off, because the kart was never quite the same after that as it was grounding through Ras Casse corner on the left hand side.

Chris went off to hospital for a check up and Fiona, my wife, went with him just in case......

For the second race of the day, this meant that we would have to split the driving between just the 3 of us, and because we needed to do 4 driver changes per race, and had only managed 3 in race 1, we were going to have to stop more than we wanted too. As he hadn't driven in race 1, Alex started the race and tore through the field - A trend which Bradley and I continued in 2 15 minute stints each, before Alex did the last half hour. We all were pushing to the max. but didn't manage to match our times from race 1 (bent chassis). But we had to drive what we had and in race 2 we actually gained back 3 laps on the leaders and up to 12 laps on others. A great drive from all, with my own highlight being able to re-pass the race leader 5 laps into my second stint after having let him past under a blue flag on my out lap :-))))


Chris returned from hospital after having been told that he'd badly bruised his ribs, and he'd be OK, much too all our relief.


So on Sunday morning I was had to admire his courage when he decided that he'd do the 4th stint of race 3 and take the chequered flag.

Bradley started the race and was doing mid 53s - When he handed over to me it was immediately obvious that the kart was not as good as it was on Saturday as you just couldn't get it to stop as quickly - the front left in particular was very mobile under braking and I was constantly adjusting the brake bias to stabilise things. I managed a 53.1, but knew it wasn't that quick.

On handing over to Alex, Bradley said the same problem had impacted him, so at least we knew what was wrong. The front tie rods are made of hard plastic, but we reckoned that with all of the braking force that they had taken over the weekend, we were stating to see some kind of 'plastic fatigue' as they lost some torsional stability - but we weren't the only ones with lots of people suffering similar issues. Normally, you'd have steel tie rods, but with the unforgiving barriers, many people would have come to grief as at least there is some give in the plastic rods. After posting mid 53s, Alex then handed over to Chris - we were a bit worried how his ribs would cope, but he soldiered on and took the flag at the end of a very physical 6 hour race. I'm not sure where we finished overall, but it would be no higher than 38th or so as losing 45 laps is never going to make life easy.

Still, it was a fantastic event and really good for me. Make no mistake, if Alex and Bradley were at my weight, they would be quicker than me, but I managed to be fastest in the team, and more importantly, without Chris's incident, we think we'd have been on the fringes of the top 6. We gelled really well, with the 2 young guns complementing the 2 gentleman drivers very well.

Apparently the guy in the middle is some sort of movie star (the young guns recognised him) and looking at the size of him, it's no wonder it took Bradley (on the right) a few laps to pass him :-)



There are rumours that next year's event may be impacted by planned re-working of the harbour area, but I'd be surprised if the don't manage to relocate somewhare else in Monte Carlo for what's become for me, the highlight of the season.