January 2024

Firstly, we would like to thank both Brian Currie Milton Keynes and our new partner, Big Sound Marketing for joining us for 2024, as i look forward to a new year's racing, I hope I can continue to champion their brands.

January saw us back at the familiar track in Banbury, Shenington, the first event of the year in the kart.

With testing on Saturday and a shortened race day on Sunday we had 6 practice sessions, then two heats and a final.

I am still using my novice plates although I now have enough races to be able to enter as a main competitor, they do offer a little protection whilst I am still relatively new to the club karting championships.

The Shenington Kart Club are holding 2 championships, a winter one which includes rounds 1,2 & 3 of the main championship and then a full year championship of 10 rounds, I expect to be competing in all 10 rounds and hoping to improve on last year's 6th place.

Shenington Winter Cup Round 1

Saturday was dry and bright if not a bit chilly, so we started our first test session on wet tyres, just to get everything dialled in and remind me the way around te track. 

I seemed to remember the way round and was quickly back into the grove despite not being able to feel my fingers.

We progressed through the day running on fill slicks for the remaining 5 session, times were ok but there was a strong headwind along the straight which was preventing me hitting the top speed im used to.

It was a valuable day getting back into the kart and with no damage, having only really experimented with tyre pressures during the day I was quite happy we had a good race setup for Sunday, Marcus, my coach was still managing to find some areas of improvement from the data so I spent most of the day working on that with him whilst dad looked after the kart.

Sunday was again cold and with some overnight rain the track was very damp, starting the day on intermediates.

Heat 1 was busy, but I managed to work my way up and finish 10th overall and fastest novice, your finishing position in the two heats gives you your position on the final grid, however being a novice, I am limited on how near the front I can get,  novices will always start at the back of the pack, there were 5 novices, so tenth was the best I could hope for.

Heat 2 saw me start on the last row, but I soon worked my way through to 10th and setting the quickest time of the weekend on the drying track.

After the penalties and results were compiled,  I ended up starting 13th in the final, I soon worked my way through the traffic, up to 9th but following an on-track incident I found myself battling with the class leader after he dropped down the order, racing with him meant our lap times were good and I could learn from following his lines, ending the race in tenth and taking the fastest novice was great, I also set my fastest time of the weekend.

So once again after a great weekend I found myself as the top novice, a good result for our first weekend.