Date: 14th February 2016
Track: Teamsport Southampton (Eastleigh)
My PB at this track (before this session): 23.732s
Best lap time this session: 24.707s

A bit of a fun session with my friend Mike (who has become a GRID member after our NYE session!) and my first outing indoors since the BRKC.

Before I had even started, I suppose that a level of arrogance had crept into my mentality; I expected to be the fastest by quite a long way, having competed at one of the highest levels of indoor karting less than one month previously.

This was soon to be knocked out of me; physically on the track and mentally when the results came out. I didn’t take the first session too seriously, but I tried to turn it on when I couldn’t pull away from Mike – in our last session, I was about a second a lap quicker – this time, he had very good pace and was keeping me honest.

There were a few bashes and even more near-misses out on track due to the unpredictability of some of the drivers. I avoided a few drivers spinning in front of me (even if it did mean losing track position to Mike a couple of times!).

I did, however, top the timesheets with a 24.778s, a little over half a second faster than Mike who managed to finish second in this session.

Maybe because it was Valentines Day, the drivers wanted to get a little closer to one another in the second session, or maybe it was the usual confidence beating ability after one session.

The second session was more competitive and much rougher and the “No Bumping” sign was shown quite a few times (even if some did not agree with it!).

I tried to keep things as clean as possible but, in these sessions, some contact between karts is unavoidable. One incident, which I was involved in, that sticks in my mind started at the hairpin entry to the flyover; having followed the driver in front closely for a couple of laps, I saw them defend the inside line at the hairpin, so I deliberately held my outside line to try to cut up the inside on the exit. This worked well and the slightest of taps opened up the space for me to overtake. Once I was alongside and tried to push on, the driver that I had just overtaken turned in to me and bounced me up the on-ramp. One lap later, the marshals showed him the no bumping sign which he felt very aggrieved about, gesticulating from his kart.

I finished first in this session with a 27.707s lap, far more consistent than the first, with Mike a little closer behind me again in second place.

With all things considered, this was an average session for me – I want to, and need to, do better in the endurance race on the 23rd. Drawing some positives for the endurance race, Mike has improved dramatically and with a little bit of coaching in racecraft, he will be a fantastic team mate on Tuesday evening!

Date: 31st December 2015
Track: Teamsport Southampton (Eastleigh)
My PB at this track (before this session): 23.732s
Best lap time this session: 24.812s

After the previous night’s racing, I decided to have a “warm down” and introduce my friend Mike to the sport that I love and put so much of my spare time into.

After chatting with Mike on the way to the track, it turned out that this was his first time karting in a very long time, but I had a sneaky suspicion that he was going to be pretty good on track, so I was keeping one eye out for him when we were racing.

We arrived very early for our session (I was allowing for traffic that simply wasn’t there!), but this gave Mike the opportunity to take a look at the track and ask for a couple of little pieces of advice from me before we went to our safety briefing.

As always in these open sessions, there was a wide range of abilities; from those who had never stepped foot in a kart before to those who regularly kart. The challenge for me was to weave through the traffic and be as competitive as I could be (without bumping anyone!).

There was a lot of traffic on the track, and unfortunately, there were a few stoppages and yellow flags throughout the first session. I felt like I was doing a good job to get around the other drivers cleanly, even if some of my moves had an air of cockiness about them. One thing that I was very proud of was squeezing through the tiniest gap following a spin by one of the drivers (at ~12:41 in the video below).

I managed a 25.405s lap in this session, about half a second in front of the nearest competitor. Mike finished eight-tenths of a second off my pace, with a 26.212s lap, which is no mean feat considering that it was his first time around the Eastleigh track.

I set Mike a challenge for the second session; to go sub 26s, and he set me a target in return – to put in the fastest lap of the day (at this point in the afternoon it currently stood at 25.003s). Normally a sub 25s lap would be easy for me, but there was a lot of traffic and lines that I would usually take weren’t always there!

If the first session was me having fun (and showboating to an extent), the second was me pushing hard; I wanted that best lap of the day and I was determined to catch up with Mike again (who beneath his laid back exterior, was a force to be reckoned with when he stepped into the kart).

All of the drivers improved massively in the second session; Mike took almost two tenths of a second off his PB in this session, but just missed out on the sub 26s lap. Although the quality of the competition might not have been as strong as the previous night, I was pleased that I managed to get the fastest lap of the day with a 24.812s lap.

After the event, one of the drivers in the session messaged me and began to follow me on my Facebook page – It was great to be able to communicate with a fellow driver and it was a boost to my confidence to be told that he learnt a lot from watching and racing me (he also managed to cut over a second off his PB between the two sessions!).

The countdown to the BRKC continues…

Date: 21st December 2015
Track: Teamsport Southampton (Eastleigh)
My PB at this track (before this session): 23.732s
Best lap time this session: 24.189s

With a little over 24 days until the start of BRKC 2016 and a few trips to tracks further afield, I fancied a bit of fun at my home track in Eastleigh.

I was feeling quite relaxed after work, but once I had got to the track, I was raring to go. There were 6 people in my session (well in the first session anyway), of which I believe all but one of them were members.

Writing this in retrospect, there were only two parts that stood out for me; a long stoppage, which I believe was due to an injury to one of the drivers and the tremendously long battle with the young driver in front.

I truly enjoyed the battle with the young driver – It made me think about every corner and every possible move that I could make and lines I would need to take into and out of the many twists and turns.

I have to say that, although I didn’t manage to get the better than him on the track (i.e. I didn’t get the opportunity to overtake him), I did succeed in getting the fastest lap of the session and topping the leaderboard.

Due to the injury to one of the other drivers, our second session contained only four drivers. However, I was very excited and expectant of another great battle with the young driver, but I was slightly disappointed that a few silly mistakes from the younger driver allowed me to pass him easily at various points on the circuit – the cool, calm driver who had the ability to drive on the racing line at all times in the first session seemed to have been replaced by a driver who got flustered when being followed by others.

I finished top of the heap in terms of lap times in this session (with my 24.189s lap), but I did learn something about myself during this evening’s karting; I enjoy it more and feel more engaged when I am racing someone, whether that be chasing or trying to pull away from them after an overtake. This epiphany, will most likely change my tactics during the pit stop elements of the BRKC (compared with last year) and my next race; the F1 event on this very track.

Date: 23rd November 2015
Track: Teamsport Southampton (Eastleigh)
My PB at this track (before this session): 23.732s
Best lap time this session: 24.879s

On a bitterly cold Monday evening, I entered my first members unlimited event. The idea was easy; just complete your fastest lap in each of the three 20 minute sessions. The final rankings would be calculated by assigning points to your position (sorted by fastest lap time) in each of the sessions and the driver with the highest total over the three sessions was the winner.

After a fantastic weekend away in the Midlands, eating rich food that I have been purposefully avoiding on my diet, I was feeling tired but really motivated to succeed.

In the first session everything felt brilliant; I was easing past more experienced drivers and swapping places and lap times with possibly the most experienced driver in the field. This leads me on to the best part of this members unlimited session – the drivers. Without doubt, this was the fairest, yet most competitive GRID event that I have ever taken part in. We were all aware of each others positions on track, faster drivers were allowed past the slower drivers (except where we had agreed to race) and the chats in the “locker room” afterwards were friendly and hilarious at times.

Back to the racing, it was a real battle between myself and Ian from the word go right to the end of the race; we traded lap times and positions on track no less than nine times during the session. I’m proud to say that in this race, I finished in second place overall, edging out Ian by two tenths of a second with a 25.022s fastest lap. The winner of the session was immense on track; a graduate from the kart academy, he is surely one to watch in the upcoming events here.

I was surprised to see another experienced driver at the bottom of the pile after the first race; he explained that he didn’t get the luck of the draw (with the kart) in the first race, but he would bounce back in the second.

I was then drawn to have the same kart as he had in the first race… Could I do any better? To cut this section short, the answer was no. I honestly can say that I have never spun a kart through 360 degrees so often as I did in the second race (if you watch the video below, I think I counted 5!). I cannot really blame the kart too much (the eventual winner of the evening, set one of the fastest laps of the entire day with it in the third race!), but it didn’t seem to suit the heavier drivers. Floundering at the bottom of the leaderboard, after my second place in the first race, meant that it was all to race for in the final.

Between the second and final sessions, I tried to work out the permutations; for me to win the event, I would need to finish first with the winner of the first two races finishing last, and myself and driver X would need driver Y to finish between us etcetera etcetera.

All of this complex mathematics was distracting me from the task ahead – ultimately, all I needed to do was go out there and race. I was not in control of anybody else’s lap times, or their finishing positions.

I honestly don’t know what happened in the final race; I couldn’t get into “the zone”. It felt like I was driving on autopilot, which in some cases can be great, but in this case, my mind was elsewhere and I had no urgency in my driving.

Surprisingly, I managed to pull some sub-25s laps out at the end, resulting in a 24.879s best over the entire evening. Unsurprisingly, however, I finished bottom of this heat and only my second place in the first race prevented me from finishing last overall.

Looking back at the evening now, perhaps I was tired from the weekend (driving up to the Midlands and back as well as all of the activities up there), but if this the case, then I will have to look at my next results at Formula Fast with a different viewpoint.

Date: 27th October 2015
Track: Teamsport Southampton (Eastleigh)
My PB at this track (before this session): 24.407s
Best lap time this session: 25.547s

After the Formula One event, I arranged another “fun” session with my colleague Nick after work on Tuesday evening. Normally on a Tuesday evening there are between four and six drivers but, on this occasion, being half-term as well, there were 9 drivers on track in each session.

In session one, things on track got very busy, very quickly, and we were soon faced with the need to overtake the back-markers. Now this isn’t normally a big issue; you follow them for a lap or two, judge where you feel you are quickest and study the lines that they take through the corners. However, the drivers that were on track fell into two categories; those that were consistently on the racing line, or those that were so erratic, that you had no idea where they were going next!

In one move, in particular, I decided to move to the outside of the track and then try to cut back in at the hairpin. It was tight, but it worked out in the end. Racing the same drivers, a few minutes later in the session, I took the decision to go out wide  again, towards the pit entry, but this time it didn’t work as it had done earlier – I collided with the barrier dividing the track from the pits (I did consider diving into the pits, but I thought I still had enough room!)

One of the occasions that I did gain an advantage from another driver was at the opposite hairpin – I was lining up Nick for the pass when we came across another back-marker. I took to the outside, whilst Nick decided to squeeze up the inside. Remarkably, I came out of the corner ahead of both of them and into a little bit of clear air.

One lap from the end, Nick “decided” to ram me from behind, causing me to jolt suddenly and jarring my lower back quite badly. Fortunately, I could limp back to the pits and rest up for 30 minutes before the second session. Unfortunately for me, it was going to be even worse in the next session!

I managed to top the lap times in this session with a 25.547s lap, so I was fairly pleased with my performance, but I was still feeling the strain in my back!

The second session started as the first, dodging back markers and trying to get enough clear air to set a fast lap time.

Just about halfway through the second session, I was caught in another incident, whilst rounding the corner into the bridge section. I thought I was fairly well in front of the kart behind me, so took my usual line through the corner in order to maintain the most momentum to get up the ramp. As I was almost through the turn and trying to accelerate away, the driver behind hit me at full speed, lifted my kart into the air and my body bent double sideways (watch the video (starts at about 13:10) below to see what I mean).

I didn’t know what to do: Do I carry on regardless? Do I get to the pits and check myself out? Do I stop here? I half-stopped, and, fortunately, my decision was made for me with the red flag coming out. This was one of the biggest crashes that I have been in, and it did really shake me up. Although one of my fastest lap times followed the crash, I almost felt like I was on auto-pilot.

I was slightly disappointed to come second, but at least I made it through the evening in one piece! My fastest lap in this session was a 25.584s, so slightly slower than the first session, but still respectable at this time of day.

I have no plans for karting until the end of November at the moment (I’m sure I will find myself a couple of drives in the meantime), but if you have any suggestions, or know of any races, please comment below and I will see what I can do!