A Proper Kart

After last months Daytona event, I quickly arranged to test  Formula Blue kart at Larkhall's MSA circuit. 

Formula Blue looks like a great idea - the same engine for Juniors/seniors with a controlled carb restrictor depending on the driver weight - which means you could use the same engine from being a Junior through to Masters or even Veterans.

So on Saturday morning I headed out on another of this weeks 'blue sky days'.

I was running a day with KMS racing which is run by Keith Seager who had everything ready for me turning up at 10:00. The chassis was a 2011 Alonso ( a Tony Kart painted blue!) and I would be running tyres that had seen a good few laps - no point in wasting a new set of boots on someone like me who hasn't been on the circuit for over 10 years!

After having Keith run me through the on board laptimer/ temp gauge and how to get the best from the kart, I went out for my first proper kart laps in a long time - and it felt great! The kart was very pointy which meant I clipped a few kerbs that I shouldn't have, but nothing major and a best of 40.83. So Keith adjusted the castor/camber at the front to balance things up a bit. The next 3 sessions were all cut short by 2 throttle cable failures (traced to a loose stop bolt on the loud pedal), and a loose carb. Once these were sorted I had another 4 sessions where I finally got in to the 39 second (just) bracket. On the second last session, one of their experienced drivers followed me round on similarly old rubber, and he couldn't catch me.

But he did do the last session on newer tyres and found 7/10ths of a second whilst, despite the rear left now having no wear markers left, I managed another 39.99.

So, all in all, a great day in fantastic, if a bit warm, conditions. I now need to do another test with a set of newer boots to see if I can continue to get closer to race speed. But if it works out, it looks like I'll be back sprint kart racing next year.