May 2024

Daytona Milton Keynes Inkart Race

I started the month with a trip to Daytona Milton Keynes,  the Inkart series has continued but I haven’t been able to commit to the championship due to my club race schedule with the Jade team.

The meeting consisted of 2 heats and a B and A final, the heats are a random draw, with 11 cadets entered.

Following the 10-minute warm up, I started heat 1 in 4th out of the 5th starters, knowing my main rival would be Rayaan Malik, we are great friends, and both started our careers with Daytona as Bambinos and have raced many times. I took advantage from the start making a bold move into turn 2 and coming out leading, with a slight gap, Rayaan and I raced hard until he finally squeezed me wide on the last corner to take the win with me in second. I still took the fastest lap from him though buy 0.056s.

Heat 2 was almost a copy of the first although I started one place ahead in 3rd we raced away from the rest of the pack pushing each other hard, so hard that we matched fastest lap time to thousandths with a lap of 60.390, we both had to wait and see where we would start in the A final.

Following the last two heats the A Final grid was decided on the fastest lap times, I ended up fourth behind champion leader Gillan Townsend, Rayaan and Jacob Noble, with new to me Arel in 5th, it was looking to be extremely competitive.

Rayaan Made a great start and I found myself immediately in 3rd defending from Jacob, Gillen was immediately going backwards with what looked like a kart issues, the final was 15 minutes of  intensive fighting with Jacob and Arel who had come into the race as we battled for the second place, Arel slipped past Jacob and up behind me but my kart seemed to be lacking the speed on the straights, both Jacob and Arel seemed to gain on me without issue and finally got past me a few laps from the end, I still pushed hard and managed to get a PB time chasing them down, however, it wasn’t to be, I just couldn’t keep the pace with my kart and came in 4th, really disappointed to not be on the podium.

Shenington Club Championship Round 5 Practice

Round 5 would prove to be a challenging weekend, least of all due to the amazing hot weather, it was so good to see the sun after the many wet races I have had.

Saturday was practice day, I started the weekend with a freshly rebuilt engine, so running in was the target for the first session, we ran some higher gearing to protect the engine as well as running the fuel rich until we had some time on the new motor.

The day consisted of 6 practices, and we finally got the kart into race trim for heat 3, changing the gearing and setting the fuel mixture back to a leaner setting.

I went out and ran for the seven minutes but the engine still didn’t feel to be pulling like it used to, the team made a few suggestions, and we changed the carburettor from my teammates Alessandro’s kart which was performing much better, despite also being on a new engine. The next session and it wasn’t much different, so for session 5 we changed the exhaust, wondering if it was contaminated with soot. This didn’t make much difference either, I was still quite a way off my best time and dropping a second to Alessandro who was now running my parts.

For the last session we changed the gearing back to an older Shenington setup but it didn’t make any difference and we were still a second behind.

Dad went through everything hoping that we would be competitive for the race day.

Race day was going to be as challenging as the practice, 3 heats and a final, a change of tyres and we set out into the 3 lap warm up, again the kart just felt like it was slow.

Heat 1

Heat one I started down in 9th so had the whole of the main grid to catch and overtake, it was going well I was up to P6 racing Rex Pooley when we both saw the chequered flag on the digi display and pulled into the pits. Everyone else did an extra lap and Rex and I dropped 9 place due to this erroneous digital flag, despite appealing to the course officials they said it hadn’t happened and we wouldn’t have our positions reinstated, this was a huge disappointment and would have a big impact on our final start position.

Heat 2

Ran smoothly I started P3 but again lacked pace and ended up back in 9th

Heat 3

Was a mid-grid start at 6th but the same result dropping me back to 9th.

Im not sure if there is an issue with the engine, but I didn’t seem to improve with any changes on the day.

The final was a bit of an anticlimax, an incident on the formation lap led to some confusion with the marshals and some karts did a shorter lap using the cut through, some didn’t, this left me way of the grid at the start along with 3 other Waterswift and not really in the race, I managed to pull myself up to 8th which was just damage limitation really and the end to a difficult weekend.

I lodged a complaint with the Clerk of the Course following the event as I felt like it was an error by the officials that had a real impact on any chances in the race, whilst those involved in the incident ended up gaining from the confusion and no penalties were issued.

I have since had an apology from the club, stating the feel that I was disadvantaged by their mistakes.

Jade will look at the engine on the dyno prior to my next event, it may just be that its still not completely run in but we haven’t had such issues in the past. I think as now it's just a second across the top 10 its noticeable if I am just a little off the pace.

Hopefully, any issues will be sorted, and everything will work perfectly in the next race.