Clay Pigeon 2012

26^th May 2012, Clay Pigeon Practice. The weather was unbelievably hot; you would get in your kart, drive for 15 in your practice session and then want to jump in an ice box it was so hot. As this was my first race weekend was going to take it slow just so I could get to grips with the track. Of course I didn’t drive to slowly because I wouldn’t have got an idea of where to brake but to start off with I just played it safe. Clay Pigeon is a very fast flowing track with a few tight hairpins but if you can get your braking points sorted it is great to drive on. Anyway back to me. I don’t have any of this fancy equipment like a Mychron4 or a GoPro helmet cam; I just have a rather nice AIM MyTach GPS Watch which works just as well as my friend Jacob’s (he is in Cadets) Mychron4. I come off the track, sit in the boot of our car and drink at least 1½ bottles of Powerade whilst my dad checks the kart over and has a quick look at the data from my watch on his laptop. I then check the tyres and basic things like that. It is so hectic we almost missed one of the practice sessions! All in all practice (Saturday) went very well and I felt I learnt the track well.

27^th May 2012, Clay Pigeon Race day! The 5 min warm up session went well and I felt I could come above last by the end of the day. Qualifying, I placed myself at the back of the grid so I could focus on just driving and not having to worry about people trying to overtake me. I was passed a few times as the people who finished in 1^st from qualifying were around 1 second per lap quicker than me. I finished in 19^th place out of a total of 27, not bad for a first timer.

Heat A, I was in Heat A and realised that if I was going to keep my position I would have to nail the rolling start. I didn’t. I dropped right to the back of the grid and had to slowly make my way up again. I was doing well, about to overtake someone for 23^rd but I missed my braking point and spun right into the hairpin, my kart wasn’t rolling backward enough and someone came careering towards me and smashed into the side of my kart, bending the side pod right up and ending my heat race.

Pre-Final, starting from 24^th place with 3 people behind me who are actually VERY fast was quite scary because yet again after the rolling start I was dumped into last place, I don’t mind working my way up because I get to practice my overtaking. Finished the pre-final in 22^nd so I made up a few places, 2 people went into the pits so I overtook 3 people.

Final, I felt good and was sure I would nail the rolling start however people up at the front kept shoving so we did a few restarts however people wouldn’t let me back into my position so I got pushed down to last place even before the race had started! The race was quite uneventful but I made it up to 22^nd again just before the chequered flag. For my first race weekend I fell it went quite well. Looking forward to the next in a couple of weeks time!