The final part of my Dubai karting experience…

Even up until the morning of the event, I was unsure whether I would sign up for the Ironman, but after seeing on Instagram that there was a promotion for first-time Ironman drivers, I decided to take the plunge.

Starting at 7:30pm, with a driver briefing scheduled prior to that, it was going to be entirely under the floodlights. We were going to be racing throughout the evening on the “Switchback” layout, which although only appears to have subtle changes from the “International Circuit”, it felt completely new when I went out on track.

The aim of the Ironman session was to go out in the Dubai Kartdrome race-fleet, and test driving ability as well as fitness and endurance behind the wheel across a possible hour’s worth of karting.

The temperature, even though it was late evening, was still in the high-30 degrees meaning that it was a test for even the most experienced driver.

My aim in this session was to “keep on karting” and drive for the entire hour (with the exception of a mandatory pit stop/kart change). I still wanted to be quick and competitive, but running at over 100kg (whilst others were at the minimum of 85kg) was going to be a stretch.

The layout was fast, but I had a couple of mental blocks per lap; I mis-positioned my kart repeatedly at the second corner after the flyover (T5) and struggled to maintain speed through the chicane in reverse (T8 and T9). The slowness through the chicane compromised my lap times as it was the start of the full throttle section which ended at T13.

Whilst I did have a few battles on track throughout the hour, my main focus was with myself, maintaining concentration and preserving myself as much as I could physically to last the entire hour.

I made two pit stops during the session (for the mandatory kart change and to tie my boot lace which had loosened itself over the previous hour). During the “boot lace pit stop”, I asked the marshal how much time was left and he said about 5 minutes, so I went back out with an aim to put three more quick and tidy laps in before the end.

I believe that fatigue, (self-made) pressure, and a different kart played a factor in the last three laps not being as neat as I was aiming for but, by the end of the session, I had completed 44 laps with a best time of 1:13.637.

A successful evening and motivation for taking part in more endurance races in the future!