Round 1 - Buckmore Park

New helmet design, new kart, new suit.

On 22nd/23rd March it was the first round of the Easykart UK championship, at Buckmore Park, as mentioned in my race preview. Not only was I looking forward to going to a new track but I was also keen to see if my new kart had given me any extra speed. We arrived at our Premier Inn on the Friday night to make sure that we were awake in the morning rather than, well, asleep.

Focused as ever

Saturday the 22nd of March was the official Easykart Practice day, and we were hoping to make some progress. However, as usual, we didn't get out for very long in the first session as we were rushing to get ready (adding fuel). I got out for about 4 laps though, which was good as it allowed me to learn the basic layout of the track, but Conways was rather slippy as it had been in the shade all morning, so couldn't dry from the previous evenings rain. Anyway that session ended with me having spun and hit the wall once, only damaging the rear bumper, and setting a very slow lap that was around the high 42 second mark. To put this into perspective the pole qualifying on Sunday was a high 39 second lap, and the conditions were pretty much the same. In the next session I was just about keeping up with Sam Faulkner for most of it - he may have been going slow, but that doesn't matter, I was keeping up with him!
The rest of the day went pretty much the same and I got a 41.3 as my fastest time. I felt OK with it but I was pretty sure that others were getting into 40 seconds.

Sunday the 23rd of March was Race day, the first one of the year. We arrived at about 8:15, set up by 8:30 and had the kart prepped by about 9:00, very efficient. Went out in the warm up aiming to just scrub my tyres in and not go to fast, when I found myself almost racing in a group of 4 people. I am unsure if they were doing the same as me or were just not getting their lines right, but I was deliberately 2 seconds off the pace.
As people who read my blog often may know, qualifying isn't one of my strong points, I think my highest qualifying from last year was about 17th, but this time it was different. I had managed to get a personal best qualifying position of 12th place with a personal best time at the track.
Thanks to my qualifying position I had a pretty good run at the first corner for the heat, but I was on the wrong side of the track. It had started to spit with rain just before we went out so some people were unsure as to which tyres to use, and some of them had to start from the back because they weren't on the grid in time. This allowed me to get up to 10th, I think, simply by having a gap in front of me. My race went pretty well and I was up to 7th when Sam Blower got past me, putting me down to 8th. We had a good battle for the rest of the race and on the final lap I overtook him by diving to the inside at Paddock. I managed to finish the heat in 7th place, my highest finish of a race and my best result for a heat.

The pre-final went OK, but it took me a while to get my line sorted. For some reason I was taking a racing line that was no-where near as quick as it was in the heat. It took me about 7  laps to get into my stride and when I did I was the 5th fastest driver out there. I finished the pre-final in 6th and, had I had 4 more laps, I could have finished 5th.
The final was where the weather turned against us; it started to snow. We went out on a brand new set of wets, but we didn't really know what pressures to run so it was a bit of guess work. I was starting on the outside in the wet, all I could think was that I was going to get binned (knocked off the track) going into the first corner. Luckily however, I didn't. I held my line and was up to 3rd after the first corner. I held 4th for most of the race, but then Mantas got past me and then I spun, putting me down to 11th. I was out of the top 10 and annoyed at myself. I was very lucky though as Jordan and Esmee, 1st and 2nd, were just behind me as I re-joined, so when I let them through I tailed them, this allowed me to fly past anybody who was moving out of their way for the blue flags. Using this tactic I got up to 7th place and stayed there.

It was a good race weekend, it proved that I was fast, I got my first top 10 finish by my own speed, not an accident (Shenington 2013). Also a congratulations is in order to Matas as he had a great drive to finish in his joint highest position of 3rd place, only his 2nd ever podium. Maybe I'll join him next time!