It was a race weekend full of highs and lows at Trent Valley Kart Club, but thankfully we finished on an amazing high, with Theo putting in 2 of the best drives of his career to date, working from the back of the grid to finish 11th overall out of 42…
We had an amazing day testing on the Friday where we were immediately quickest on track, and stayed that way all day. This meant we could be more adventurous with the set up on the Saturday, where we managed to improve our pace in the wet too. So we went into Sunday feeling very confident.
Our hopes soon unraveled though in Qualifying when we caught up to a driver who just cost both of us time rather than work with us – resulting in us qualifying 18th in our group (34th overall)! In the Pre-Final, starting from 17th, the same driver kept on smashing Theo from behind even on the rolling up lap, and shortly after the start he smashed Theo so hard that it mangled and ripped off his metal bumper, meaning that Theo was shown the “mechanical” flag and had to come in to the pits. We hurriedly fitted another bumper on his kart to get him out at the back of the restart but the bumper fell off so sadly we had to settle for a DNF.
This meant Theo started 8th of 10 in the B Final with a lot of work to do. But he won that B Final, promoting him to start the A Final in 33rd amongst a very strong pack. Determined to show everyone the pace that he’d shown all weekend, Theo drove one of his best races ever, bridging what looked like impossible gaps between the packs that had developed as he worked his way through. By the last lap he had caught up to the 2nd pack as they were fighting, and he took advantage to finish 10th on the timing screen, but was later classified as 11th.
So, no trophies but we couldn’t be happier and prouder in the way that Theo put all the disappointments behind him and drove his socks off to give one of best displays of damage limitation that I’ve seen.
A huge thanks to our Allstars Racing Team boss Luke Hines for all the hard work and support all weekend. Thanks also to Dan, James and Grant at ZipKart for all their advice too. And not forgetting all the karting friends that came over to console and congratulate us.
Winning the B final