Wednesday 28 October 2020

British Indoor Karting Championship

As promised, here is a pre-regional final update regarding this year’s British Indoor Karting Championship competition, in association with Motorsport UK

Following on from my qualification to the ‘local’ final, which took place on 13th October, I lined up alongside the top rental kart drivers from Bristol and the surrounding area in a bid to make the ‘regional’ final, scheduled to take place at Teamsport’s Farnborough venue on November 9th (not the 2nd, as I’d previously thought!) ..

For the local final, drivers would only be on track against racers from their own weight class, which made things pretty simple: Finish in the top three, and you’re through to the regional final. After a short practice/qualifying session I found myself lining up 3rd on the grid (out of 8 other ‘heavyweight’ drivers) behind Luke Chard-Maple in second and an on-form Andy Taylor, who stormed to pole position by a surprising margin. 

After a clean start to the race it soon became evident that the top 3 would not be challenged, as Andy, Luke & I pulled out a comfortable margin over the rest of the field. Andy, taking full advantage of a particularly sweet kart, and Luke swapped positions on a couple of occasions ahead of me, but through a combination of their relentless pace and a couple of mistakes of my own I fell back from them in the final third of the race, eventually crossing the line around 3 seconds behind, with Luke taking the win. As nice as it would have been to have taken victory on the night, after years of either bad luck, under-performance or scheduling issues, it’s nice to be able to finally say that, in finishing third at the local final, I’m through to the next stage of the competition formerly know as Kartchamps - Get in!

The plan now is to get myself over to Farnborough for a bit of pre-event practice (possibly with Andy in tow!) in an attempt to familiarise myself with the track and it’s (electric) karts, which from previous experience I know to be mega-torquey and eerily quiet..

Watch this space!

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