Daytona F1 12 Hour Charity Kart Race

After months of doing absolutely no racing, it was back to doing something that was both physically and mentally challenging.

We had a team in this event last year, but I had to drop out due to man flu. Thankfully, I was fine this year and with teammates consisting off Martin Farmer, Declan McDonnell and Joe Wiggin, I was pretty sure that we'd be near the front.

Martin is the reigning UK Formula V champion, Dec has numerous championships to his name and is currently racing in Rotax Max, as is young Joe (only 16). I hadn't raced since doing a 24 hour at Daytona last October!

Dec picked me up from the airport and in no time we were at the circuit. Friday's track time was only 90 minutes, where every driver had to do a minimum of 3 laps, and the fastest time would also decide the grid positions for Saturday's race. We were all pretty close with, as expected, Martin putting in our quickest time which earned us 6th on the grid.


As with any endurance event, grid positions don't mean much, so we stopped with over 30 mins remaining, and we were quite happy with 6th. It's not your quickest driver, but your slowest that makes the difference, so given our lap time spread of less than a second, we were looking forward to the race.

Saturday dawned wet and blustery, but we knew that it would be, after all, it's summer :-)

Martin took his place on the grid and on lap 3 had just overtaken the gut ahead when the engine cut out. It took around 3 minutes to get the kart back to the pits, and after the std 10 minute fix window, he was sent out in a new kart, 10 laps down on the leaders.

To say we were disappointed  is putting it mildly. But, what can you do? Martin finished his 75min stint and handed over to Declan who got back into our own kart which had finally been fixed. The track was getting wetter, and Dec really shines  when it's slippy - he was easily quickest on the track for most of his stint. Joe then took over and kept out of trouble and was very consistent - in amongst the 3 quickest karts for his whole session.


Then it was my turn - I went to the re-fuel bay and the guys did their stuff, but then the kart wouldn't start. we had asked them to change the battery after them constantly trying to start it during the early race failure (which turned out to be the wiring loom), but they said it would be fine - it wasn't :-( So another 3 laps lost and all the good work done by the team wasted. Dec, in particular, was raging!

And it didn't end there, about 4 laps from the end of my stint, the kart suddenly slowed out of turn 5, which was another battery issue - the + lead had worked loose. I managed to attract the attention of a marshall and he out it back on and I finished my laps.

From then on that kart was fine and we just concentrated on lapping as fast as possible and staying out of trouble. Martin was usually the quickest on track with the rest of us in the top 3, so we had great pace, and by the end of the 12 hours, we were back up to 4th place, 8 laps down on the leaders, Mercedes F1.

We were naturally a 'bit peeved', as we think we could have won, but no matter, we still finished 3rd on the non F1 podium and that gives us £750 to donate to the charity of our choice.

Driving wise, although my time were OK, I am still sore 3 days later. So I need to get some more racing done...........