Zach, Will & Charlie @ Shennington

The Oxfordshire rain greeted our Hondas and Viper at the former airbase, with much enthusiasm however we launched the shelters and marched Will and Zach off for a track walk in the annoyingly persistent rain.

Charlie is one of our two currently active Bambino drivers and this being his first ever time in a kart at MSA level was being assessed by a Bambino “guide” who on completion of a number of elements would be signed off for his licence to take part in the trialling competitions, as Charlie with parents in toe went off for his brief we took Zach and Will and looked at a couple of specific points to concentrate on.

The Honda test day was a straightforward affair with a wet dry mix and with both lads concentrating on shortening braking and smooth entries into Bruno we made steady progress, neither wildly quick but not the slowest and certainly gaining speed consistently.

Vipers @ Shenington

Charlie and dad arrived on the dummy grid for the first Bambino session and with Charlie never having driven at this level let alone in the rain were feeling a little nervous, however with the “fire and forget” option selected dad launched Charlie at the track and waited for him to reappear. Of course the C50 class is a little slower than the other classes and with Shenington being a somewhat long track first time drivers do take a while to come back round! However, the team and parents were soon greeted by the sight of Charlie’s Centaur and a huge grin from within the helmet, a sigh of relief and some applause saw our Viper disappear off into the distance and continue lapping until the end of his first session, returning from the pits Charlie had broken the first barrier and was looking forward to the remainder of the day.

Race day

Will “defo” had one of those race days you could say, but it certainly wasn’t anything he could have avoided. In practice Will and a rebuilt “Titan” instantly showed a strong pace and looked as though we were going to move up into the yellow plate pack with ease.

H1 19th: H2 DNF: H3 DNF Final DNS

H1 saw a strong drive but repairs from an incident in practice saw his tyre pressures overlooked and 5 laps in he began to cook the rubber and went off the pace

H2 with tyres sorted Will was driving hard and pushing forward with ease, pushing hard on the corner exit saw him clip the tyres and whilst happy to “crack on” was held while a first aid official checked him before he could continue, when he did we had one lap remaining!

H3 was a great start but Will arrived at turn one to find karts everywhere and ended up with a whiplash incident, the medics dosed him up and said if he felt up to it he could race the final.

Previous to the final Will was given a simple instruction that if he sat in the kart and felt any pain at all he was not to proceed which sadly was the case and a dejected Will walked away from the grid and a race day that he has already moved on from!

Will is still sore from the accident but will return for F6 and is fully intent on showing the obvious pace that he had, it happens of course but rarely do you ever read about it, Will is expected to do well this year and without any doubt had the pace but simply ended up in the right place but at the wrong time!

Zach had a first meeting to celebrate, and managed to stay out of the wars as his rolling starts still need some work, thankfully this was to be his saving grace!

H1 22nd: H2 19th: H3 17th: Final 19th

Zach has only just passed his ARKS at Clay and showed he has the focus to use his training to full effect, smoothing his lines and chasing down to pass were part of a small number of achievements that continued through the day culminating in a final result to celebrate.

Disappointed at the same time for his team mates luck Zach drove his best laps and given a bit more track time was in shooting distance of the 2nd novice cup, saddened to not collect a novice cup Zach showed that he will soon be up there.

Well done lads, a great weekend on the whole, we will have better results next time without any doubt….it simply is what it is and so we move on.