Second never felt so good....

On Sunday Nov 23rd, I had my first race since the Britcar 24 hour in Nov 2012.

And here's why...

Jan 2013 - Lost vision in my left eye (see previous post) - now back to 85% of what it was.
June 2013 - Started getting weird heart rhythms so went to see a cardiologist and had a monitor fitted in August.
Sep 2013 - Called into hospital - diagnosis of VT - not good.
Nov 2013 - Operation using RF ablation to try to burn away tissue in the heart that is causing a "short circuit" - didn't work.
April 2014 - Operation 2 - using Ballon Mapping and further ablation - so far, so good.


So after 3 Palmersport events in Aug/Sep 2014 and a few practice sessions at Scotkart@Clydebank, it was time to go racing.

Raceland in Edinburgh is where I learned my race craft so it seems logical to head back there to see a) How my ticker coped with the adrenalin that only racing can bring and b) if I was still competitive given over a year of training down time and the ever advancing years :-(

I managed to get Neil Purdie, Jamie Adam and Bernie Thear to come along and it was a pleasant surprise to find that Eric Wishart and Duncan Hume (both of whom I raced against in the early 2000's) were also competing.

The practice session was a real wake up call as I struggled with the new (to me) karts but my draw for the races gave me a decent chance of a good result in my first race with a start from P1 in the 3rd heat of the day. The next was a P16 in heat 5 and then P21 in heat 6.

My first race was pretty uneventful with a good start and a straightforward win, but the kart was totally different (much quicker) than the one I had in the practice session.

Heat 5 with a P16 start was great fun where I managed to get up to 3rd my the end of lap 1 and over the next 6 laps I managed to squeeze past the drivers ahead and take another win.

I didn't expect too much from my last heat as both Bernie and Jamie were near the front, and P21 is only 2 from the back, but another good start saw me up to 8th in the best kart I'd driven, and I quickly got up to 3rd. I could see I was catching the front 2 quite quickly (Jamie was first) but I got tangled up with 2 back markers on lap 5 and that lost me around 3 seconds - still, a 3rd from P21 was better than I anticipated.

As I got out of the kart and congratulated Jamie on his win, all he could tell me was that his kart was really bad and he had no idea how he'd won in it.

So for the final I had qualified on pole with Jamie in 2nd, Neil 8th and Bernie 16th - Bernie was having his first race in 11 years the day before his 67th birthday, so he was doing fine :-)

Given what Jamie had said about his kart, which I'd now be driving in the final, we had a quick chat where he told me what the problems were - the front tyres were shot, meaning you had to lift off the throttle on a few corner entries where in other karts you could keep the throttle flat. It didn't bode well, but I made a good start and Jamie slotted in behind me.

That didn't last long as the kart understeered everywhere, just like Jamie had said. By the time we got to the end of the 1st lap Jamie had got past and was pulling away.

I spent the next 8 laps fighting with Eric, his son and Neil and somehow I managed to cross the line 2nd having dropped down to 4th at one point as the kart was up to a second slower than the karts behind (and the times I'd done in the heats) - the kart was a real handful!

Neil's race was good until he got punted from 3rd to 6th with 2 laps to go, and Bernie made up a couple of place to claim 14th.

All in all, a fun day and despite being race rusty, a great result in a kart that shouldn't have been in the top 6.