Date: 21st May 2015
Track: Teamsport Southampton (Eastleigh)
My PB at this track (before this session): 25.270s
Best lap time this session: 26.535s
Weight (at the end of the sessions): 96.4kg

I decided to arrange another Thursday evening karting session after work with my colleague who, this week, had bought a Sony action camera and I persuaded him to give it a trial run during this session.

I was hoping for some better times than the previous time I raced, due to my weight loss through dieting (I had lost approximately 6kg over the two weeks).

The first session was delayed due to the late arrival of the other drivers and the fact that they had to go through their driver briefing before we could start.

The marshal got myself and Nick ready and into the karts. Then we got out again (because the others hadn’t even got suited up at that time). About 10 minutes later, we were back in the karts ready to go.

The first race was fairly uneventful; I managed to dispose of Nick quite quickly and then set off in clear air to put in lap after lap in an attempt to beat my PB.

By the end of the session, I had lapped every driver in the session (including Nick) at least once, and finished top of the leaderboard.

There was only one session between our first and second races – the track combined groups, so instead of five racers in the first session, there were now seven drivers on track. This was going to make the session far more disjointed, but also more exciting!

It started very much like the first; very cold karts and myself and Nick leading the way out of the pits battling with each other. I may have got a little frustrated this time being behind Nick, forcing me into trying to make moves that really were 50:50 at best. Not only did this do nothing for my track position, but this also compromised my lap times.

Once I managed to make a move stick, I couldn’t shake Nick off my tail (which was great for being captured on his helmet camera!).

The race was full of overtaking back markers, which was entertaining, even if sometimes it got a little hairy with me trying to overtake multiple karts at the same corner, but it was also littered with yellow and red flags, ruining any consistency with my laptimes.

I did manage to shave a little bit of time off my lap times this week, but now that I can see where I’m going wrong (at one corner in particular), I am going to have to put in more effort to tweak my driving style.

I’ve always wanted to invest in an action camera for my helmet, but now I’m convinced that I should!