Ironman - by Matt Evans

It's been a long time since i was in a kart, too long so Jules and myself got back in the saddle at a mates birthday party. A 60Lap IronMan/Iron Woman event at Rouge Racing in Aylesbury which was split it into two 30lap blocks with a 5 min practice/ qualifying. After the qualifying we lined up on the grid, Jules, Me, Dan, Pete, Chris, Sav and Erin. There was one more, Carla but she didn't get on with karting, so ducked out early. Shame as we all know how much fun it is. Spose it didn't help that Erin hit her up the rear on the first corner!

Back

Ready to Go

Sitting on the grid red light on, the start guy shouts "3, 2, 1".........GREEN LIGHT, slammed my right foot flat down, and off we go! In to the first corner and well, jules was at the end of the straight! Man, that guy's fast! After the first two laps, tyres nice and warm, I started to think about hitting the corners a bit harder. The only problem is I started to actually hit the corners! Just pushing the kart to hard and fast in to the corners really. Next thing i know i had Dan breathing down my neck. Couple of corners later he had worked out where my weak lines were and got past. We battled for the rest of the race, over-taking each other and that's when i was like, " this is the guy that I'm going to have to watch out for".

After 15 to 20 laps in I was starting to feel it, and thinking the heavy night drinking wasn't the best of ideas! I was feeling really unfit and the race seemed to be going on forever! I just wanted the break. After 10 mins they stopped us all and we got out and when to the viewing area, checking out the times and guess who was first... yeah Mr Thrasher! then dan, me, pete, chris, sav, erin.(sorry if that's wrong)

Dan got infront of me! I can't let him get away with that... then my legs gave away! No really!

Round 2

Ten Mins later everyone was back in their karts. Sat in mine and the guy starting my kart sees how loose my steering wheel is, 15 to 20 degrees! They Fix it and we all look towards the red light. Green light and here we go again! First lap we were all really close and I started over-taking people around the first corner, flat out with cold tyres, the wrong line and bang... tyre wall! That was me out of my kart then chris hit me side on. We waited for a bit of a gap, then chris tried to get through and blocked us both again! This happened a good 3 or 4 times. After a couple of laps and some of my best driving ever, I caught up with Dan. For the next couple of laps it was me and dan battling it out, at one point 5 of us going into a hairpin and as you would expect some bumping.

After alot of laps with varying corner success the red light came on and I'm still half way round the hairpin, with dan all of 3 metres behind me. Lucky for me he hadn't started the descent yet so I got to roll to the bottom making the gap a good 10 meters between us. This also meant I could see the hold up, Sav had broken his kart. With some fancy driving from one of the staff he got a new kart and the race continued. And quickly finished, too quickly for me.

We all pulled up in the pits and when to the viewing area as the staff printed out the results. Before you see the results I would like to say thank you to everyone that came to Pete's Birthday Kart Race, and I had a really good time as I feel everyone else did. Just a shame Carla Didnt enjoy it.

Ok now for the Results

1. Julian Thrasher
2. Daniel Hewitt
3. Peter Shaw
4. Matt Evans
5. Chris Ulph
6. Andrew Savill
7. Erin Corrigan

Thank again to everyone, and the guys at Rouge Racing in Aylesbury. I feel that my driving has improved so much and i have the karting bug again.

Matt