British Championship Round 1

Thursday

We arrive at track and set up we also get all our passes to have access the pits for the weekend. Being there on a day before also gives us a chance to get our allocated tyres and to collect our controlled fuel, this all takes time and means that test day we can just concentrate on the set up.

Friday Testing

Testing was a time for me to test a second engine that someone had kindly let me borrow, I was happy we had a good enough spare so it was time to bolt my engine on and see the comparison as I know what my engine is capable of. This is where disappointment struck as unfortunately my engine was lacking top end power still, I was gutted as this had just come back from an engine builder so I defiantly didn’t expect it, so we tried the carb and that was down so we rebuilt the carb and set off again, after 4 laps I knew enough and the engine was still lacking top end.  Friday we found out what engine worked best it was a really positive team day and we could see what our kart was capable of pace wise, so I felt confident going into Saturday with qualifying.

Saturday

Saturday started well as first practice we was one of the fastest on track. We did decide to change engines again to see if there was more time to be found in a lap but unfortunately there wasn’t so we went back to the strongest engine for qualifying. Qualifying started well with me consistently lap after lap being in the top ten but with a minute or two to go we caught traffic which lost me massive time and ended up 18th which was a hard result to swallow as I knew I had so much more but 5 minutes and catching the pack just didn’t give me enough time but that’s racing and we was looking fast for heat one but in a very tough position. The heats where difficult with people defending early and losing ground as well as being loaded into turn 1 and losing yet more time. Heat 1 I started 19th but at the start my lane stopped and I had to stay in position so I didn’t pick up a penalty, which ment the other lane everyone had gone so through the start line I was completely last in 27th but I got my head down and made it back up to finish 19th, with a strong competitive lap time.

Sunday

Heat 2 I started 19th straight down to 24th on the first bend as I got picked up into turn one and couldn’t stop so had to hit the inside curb so I didn’t end up in the wall this ment I massively lost momentum which you can’t do at British Champs level I did finish 23rd.

Final 1 went from bad to worse as made a great start from 20th I took the outside line to be  14th only to have to avoid a spinning kart meaning I had to take avoiding action so I didn’t go straight over the top of him, I came back on track dead last in 26th and had a huge gap to the back of the pack which I fought hard to Finish a respectable 20th.
Final 2 was another frustrating race as I made an good start and then made a move to get up the field only to get into a racing battle near the back which i didn’t want as I wanted to work together as I had better pace but they could of stayed in my slip stream and we could of caught the pack but no this wasn’t to be meaning a massive loss in time and me finishing 18th which wasn’t how I wanted to end the weekend however we was still came away as top rookie which was a positive to take away with us, So we put that one behind us, my engine back to the engine builders and then onto the second round of British champs at Fulbeck.

Credit to Chris Walker at Kartpix for the photos.

      

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