Date: 1st April 2016
Track: Teamsport Gosport
My PB at this track (before this session): 29.956s
Best lap time this session: 30.918s

As I wrote in my last blog post, I thought it was time for both me and Mike to go to a new track and so, before Mike travelled halfway across the world for work, I arranged an evening of karting at my old stomping ground of Teamsport Gosport.

I have to say that it was nice to be back and that, whilst there had been changes there, lots of good memories did flood back to me. Mike and I had a little catch up, but it was soon time to get into the karts and compete and, for me, find out if I could continue where I had left off.

As this was a public group, inevitably the sessions were littered with yellow flags and stoppages, alongside the difficulties of completing a fast lap in clear air.

During the first race, I found myself feeling frustrated by one driver, who I felt was considerably slower than me, but was driving very defensively. In my attempts to pass this driver, I fell behind a couple more karters, who opportunistically passed me. Eventually, I made the required overtakes and had one lap to set a good time for this session.

I expected to do well, but I didn’t expect to feel so comfortable so quickly around this track having not raced here for over a year. After all of the yellow flags and overtaking, I was delighted to top the leaderboard with a 30.971s lap – about a second off my fastest laps ever at Gosport.

After the first session, where Mike drove without any advice from me (at his request), we chatted about some visual markers for braking points, some different lines to the corners and methods for overtaking the other drivers on a notoriously difficult track to pass people on.

The second session started with a considerable amount of traffic, which I dispatched fairly easily (apart from one driver who frustrated me for a good few laps). However, once I had overtaken him, I had clear air in which to put in my hot laps. It was during these laps that I managed to put in my fastest lap of the race; fractionally quicker than in the first session, but still in the 30.9’s (30.947s).

After this period out on my own, I quickly caught up to the tail of the field which halted my charge. There were some questionable moves made to defend my attacks, but nothing that I couldn’t handle. Unfortunately, once I had passed the group of drivers (and found myself in space), I couldn’t find my rhythm again to better my laptime.

I did top the timesheets at the end of the session, but with a much smaller advantage than I had in the first race.

Before the third and final session, I asked Mike where he felt he was losing time, but he said that didn’t really know. Once the karts had been selected and it was clear that I would be starting behind Mike, I offered to stay quite closely behind him for a few laps and then we could analyse the footage from my helmet camera later for pointers.

I did exactly as I had promised, following behind Mike, despite a couple of mistakes that I could have capitalised on had I been racing hard. From my position, Mike seemed very aware that I was close behind him, and this appeared to spur him on to lap faster and faster. After I had felt that my “camera work” was done, I launched into “race mode” and tried to reel Mike in and pass him to get some clear air. This didn’t go to plan for me; I naïvely thought that I would be able to jump on any mistake he made and get past. But Mike did not make any mistakes and was actually lapping around the 31s mark, neutralising many of the other tricks up my sleeve.

As we came up to a back marker, Mike managed to squeeze past and I tried to follow him through. There wasn’t enough space for me to get past safely, so I backed off and waited for the next opportunity. At the first corner, the driver in front span and collided with me as I drove past.

Soon afterwards, there was a yellow flag, which bunched myself and Mike back up together. As this was not a race, but a time trial, track position was not important so, with only a few laps to go, I decided to go the other route – drop back by a few seconds and then try to put in a fast lap and catch up with Mike again.

I was really happy to see that Mike had topped the leaderboard in the final session, despite me finishing a couple of tenths behind him with a 30.918s lap (my third 30.9s best lap in the three sessions!) in third place. This session was all about giving Mike the opportunity to analyse some video footage, to see how he could improve his karting in general.

I do need to get a little bit of outdoor practice in before the “Karting for Heroes” race in about a month’s time, but I have the feeling that my next karting session will be indoors too!