Ironman Karting

So I've just finished the race, to say it was tough was an understatement. 
It was a strange format due to there being 23 participants in that you had a 5 min qually session and the marshal would pick out the fastest person and everyone else just lined up behind them in their track position, so it was just a matter of luck as to where you were! Unfortunately I was about 12th... The car had chronic understeer during qually, the flat out bends on the straight (if that makes sense) were very hairy and couldn't be taken at full speed to start with. The brakes also pulled massively to the right which once I knew that wasn't a bad thing!


So the race started and it went well to start with, gained 5 spots on the first lap and a couple more on the next few laps. The car was still massively understeery and I was very worried about getting mugged on the straight. Ironically however, choosing to defend my line at the end of the straight was my undoing. As I went inside and therefore braked early, the guy behind hit me quite hard, pushed me offline and then it was a case of how hard I was going into the tyres. After the mashall dug me out I was in around 16th. He did get a 30sec penalty for doing it, but it didn't help me! Saying that, the heavy impact seemed to help with the understeer and it was a little better to drive after that.


So the next hour was spent plugging my way back up the order, the competition was pretty good, and there was quite a spread of the field, so I had about 10-12 laps of open road at one point. That's the hard part really, normally I like pounding out the laps, but towards the end of the first hour, dehydration was kicking in, and my shoulders were starting to ache. Once amongst traffic concentration kicked in and you didn't notice the pain so much. Overtaking wasn't too bad, and for some reason there wasn't a marshal on my favourite overtaking spot (for those that know the track, it's the left hander at the bottom of the ramp) so they couldn't spot any 'nudges' :)


There were two very fast guys out there who were streets ahead of the rest of us, mind you they had their own Sparco race suits and boots so they'd done it before!


There were a couple of red flag incidents which stopped the race, I'm not sure what for but it involved people swapping karts. On the second flag, I was sure it was near the end of the race, and I called a marshal over to get the time. 50 mins remaining! I'll be honest, if it wasn't for that 2nd prolonged red flag I'd probably have had to stop. I was getting cramp in my right leg, and my abs were hurting so much I thought I was going throw up in my helmet, plus I desperately needed a drink. 


Back underway I got past a few more people and was in a gap again, tough time that, the race leader lapped me, but I caught him and unlapped myself momentarily in the traffic. The car was getting oversteery now in the first half of the lap and I did have a spin at one point, but it was in a wide area so I got it spun around without the marshal and didn't lose a spot. 


The race finally ended and I crawled out of the car, I had no idea where I was placed and was pleased with 5th, my target being in the top half. Maybe without the big crash near the start 4th was possible but as that cured my understeer and made me come through the pack, I would probably have died long before.


Fastest lap was a 55.4 (lap 61) which I was also happy with, my previous best there was a 57.4. The winner did 53.8 so I obviously have some way to go!


So physically gruelling, good fun, but never again for that distance!!!