I can honestly say that I’ve never been colder than I was racing this weekend. Standing around for 2 days in the bitter cold really chills you to your bones, but it was all worthwhile in the end! Here’s a quick recap of the weekend…
Saturday – Practice
Weather dry but very cold and sunny. Temp 2 degrees C.
Track: Shenington, Oxfordshire
- 5.45 alarm went off
- Husband started the day off being grumpy because lots of kids had the day off school yesterday to test and we sent Theo to school so he feels we’re starting the weekend on the back foot. Plus Theo has a birthday party to go to this afternoon so is going to leave 2 hours early.
- 6.45 boys dressed, organized and set off for circuit. At this point I get to put my feet up for a couple of hours and have a cuppa in front of the telly before I need to get moving. Bliss!
- 11.30-1.00 Drive to the track.
- Catch up with other parents, listen sympathetically to various karting woes, provide lunch and hot cups of coffee for everyone and remind child to eat, which is always a battle on race-weekends!
- Try and find number of child’s parent whose party we were supposed to be attending this afternoon. Leave a message saying we need to finish testing and will drop by with the present and card this afternoon. Try to think of ways to make up for him missing party by having friend over next week after school and providing large chocolate post-birthday cake.
- Much discussion about whether it’s going to snow overnight tonight and what that will mean for the weather and kart set-up tomorrow. Lots of pouring over weather apps and keeping the opinion to myself that it was a bit pointless testing today if the weather is due to be totally different tomorrow.
- 2 hour drive to take Theo to the (now-finished) birthday party, but luckily they were still there, despite not getting my voicemail, so he went and played video games for an hour.
Sunday – Race Day
Weather: Snow on the ground, overcast and slightly windy. Freeeeeezing! Temp -5 but warmed up to about 2 degrees C.
- 5.45 Woke up to find a crisp white blanket of snow covering everything. No idea whether it had snowed at the track though, so set off usual time.
- Track completely covered by snow, so start delayed to see if it would thaw. After 2 hours they let people drive round the track in their cars and vans to try and clear the snow. Dads and mechanics got rather over-exuberant after being egged on by the kids and we now have a new dent in the van.
- By 1pm the track was clear and just wet so racing was cut down to just 2 heats. No final today, they would work out the winner based on the results from the 2 heats.
- The track was absolutely fine, just wet, but lots of kids came in from the heats on tears because their hands and feet were so numb they couldn’t move them. Lots of hot chocolates and sitting the van to warm up in between sessions. Also there was the added problem that any time anyone went wide or spun off they would end up beached in the snow!
- Heat 1. Gridded 15th and worked his way through to 4th. Was briefly 3rd but couldn’t quite hold onto it.
- Heat 2. Started 9th and finished 2nd.
- They worked the podium places out based on the position the kids would have started the final. Theo and another boy got the same number of points (the other kid got 3rd in both heats while we got 2nd and 4th), but sadly they put the other kid in 2nd position and us in 3rd. Unlike other tracks who would decide a tie-breaker by who got the fastest lap (us) or who got the overall highest finishing position (us), they did it by who finished highest in the first heat. I’m not bitter, ha ha! It was great to start to the year with some silverwear, and puts us currently in joint 2nd in the championship.
