A fantastic weekend’s racing at Trent Valley Kart Club, this time as Dad and Lad (and Mum!), resulting in trophies for Top Rookie and finishing 6th overall out of a strong grid of 55 drivers – not to mention setting 2 fastest laps in the final. If it weren’t for the Red Flag in the final, Theo would have even got 3rd! 😮
We started with a very productive day’s testing on Friday with Lewis Hall of Virtus, and we were straight away on blistering pace, being one of the fastest on track all day. We therefore started Saturday’s practice in a very confident mood and so used the day to experiment quite wildly with kart setup. Despite this, we were still very fast, so went into Raceday Sunday in a very confident mood.
Theo started race day well, with 3rd fastest in practice, and working with Archie Brown (Shane) in qualifying they almost qualified in 1st and 2nd in their group, but in the last couple of laps they couldn’t improve so had to settle for 4th and 5th in qualifying.
Starting from 5th in the Pre Final, Theo battled with the front pack for most of the race until a couple of the others came together, and he capitalised on this to push away whilst in 2nd position. After some pressure from behind, Theo managed to hold on for the rest of the race and finish in 2nd.
This meant that Theo started the main Final in 4th. After a reasonable start, Theo lost 1 position on the opening lap as he struggled to get the tyres to switch on – Daddy’s fault, too low on tyre pressures! He held 5th for some time until he had a bad couple of laps after which he dropped down to 10th with half the way still to go. But Theo’s kart finally came on and he started to fight his way back with amazing pace. After setting 2 consecutive fastest laps of the race, Theo was back up to 4th and flying with 1 lap to go and about to overtake 3rd. Alas, a Red Flag incident caused an early end to the race, and once the result was wound back a lap, Theo had to settle for 6th overall. Still, a fantastic drive all weekend, and a great result nonetheless – especially so as we were running as Dad and Lad during the Saturday and Sunday!
We’d like to thank Lewis Hall for all his work on Friday, and for the phone support during the rest of the weekend. We’d also like to thank Mike Spencer (and Robert!) of Global Karting for ensuring Theo’s chassis was in tip top condition for race day. Thanks as ever to Dan, James & Grant at ZipKart for an awesome kart!
Oh, and well done to Sam Heading for the win!
On to the next race…
The honda cadet grid for the final at PFI, we’re up in 4th if you can spot us!