Just last week we both have attended event where few of my colleagues decided to participate in a charity go kart event at Whilton Mill. This was endurance type of challenge where you have 3-4 drivers and 2hr of racing. Due my other work commitments we arrived a little late but just in time before green lights out, so I quickly pulled my amateur level camera and started shooting. Oh, the weather, it was ‘liquid sunshine’ which was not nice for the drivers and my camera lens.
Angel took first stint so he starts featuring in the first pictures:
They have decided to split the time into 40min drive (equal to all of the 3) with last driver making mandatory pitstop (as they were only 3 while other teams had 4 people, so to make it fair all have to make same number of pit stops).
It was rather unfortunate for Angel as he started to drive when it was raining really bad. You could see the karts being filled with water when going over the puddles and the temperature outside was under 10 degrees. We were cold just to watch it – imagine racing it!
At the pits we had some great discussions about the strategy and when they should to the refuelling. This is something all teams were talking about – it effectively becomes really long pit stop but the sooner you do it, the more time to focus on the race itself!
Few shots from the talks and when we went to grab some dinner – big thumbs up for WM for very appropriate pricing and great quality food (burger with bacon and fries were ~£8).
Very soon it was time for the first pitstop. Team have done great job, Tom called Angel in and few corners later the refuelling was open! Fair bit of luck involved indeed, but what a great timing! He did everything perfectly and came to swap with Ross. He has been racing go karts for a while, so a level of expectation was there! At this point, team was 2nd with very little gap to 1st.
At the time Ross started going around the circuit we noticed that rain was easing. However, there was quite a bit of standing water, and as always, it’s in the racing line. Later he said that it was literally a boat race! But hey, you cannot buy or book the weather, so had to overcome this challenge in one way or another. He seem to have done very well, we checked his data afterwards and he was very consistent, which is difficult to do in the wet. Big thumbs up for him.
Meanwhile at the paddock:
Yep, more food 😀
Anyway, thanks to Angel picking up all pre-penalty points in his stint, Ross started to get some warnings, but no penalties yet. He was doing well and we were 1st with some gap behind. It was now the time for Calvin to do his part. Ross came to pits for the change. A little late reaction but Calvin now had rain over-suit which really should have been worn by Angel from the beginning, but hey, at least someone had the benefit from the team!
Because of such intense fight, everyone picked up some warnings but eventually it was Calvin who received the penalty. It was drive-through in addition to the final pit stop he had to make. At this point we were leading with 2 laps budget, and the pit stop is close to the time needed to do 1 lap. There was obviously concern of potentially loosing first place because of the penalty! And rules being little unclear if he needs to get out of the kart or not meant that there was little confusion at the pits, but we did all as required and kept the game clean. Here’s the action (yes it was dark and very cold!):
Coming close to the end of the race you naturally start to worry about the end result and it was clearly visible in everyone’s face.. Sadly there’s not much to do from the pits. Calvin did great job to stay in the lead and shortly there was chequered flag waved with us still being in P1. Yes, that is a win!
I must say that other teams were very competitive and they were all over the strategy and time-improvement plans (we overheard conversations while having the dinner) and you can tell from the timings that it was a very close fight. So it our defence, it was not a race with the kids, but rather fast drivers. And guys truly deserved the win!
Big applause for now and they said Bahrain WEC next, but I think that was a joke :))))