Endurance Karting

Wagga Round 2

Firstly let me apologise for not updating the site on a regular basis. Due to a hectic few months I have not had the time. Now that I have retired I plan to keep the site more up-to-date with what is going on at Team Canberra as well as other news from the Endurance Karting world.

Now for the year so far.

Once again our year of endurance racing has been interrupted by family commitments, work and other factors. So far we have only managed the one round at Wagga back in March and a forgettable round it was! The one good thing about the round was that Chris was able to get time off from his Naval duties and join us for a weekends racing. Unbelievable turn around in Chris’s driving, he was by far the quickest and most consistent of all three of us. Well done and thanks Chris.

The weekend was split into two 4 hour races.

Race 1 was going well and we were having fun and putting in some good times. Eric was even more relaxed now that he is no longer the race day secretary (a thankless job he did for 2 years). Due to cost cutting we decided to run with used tyres that had already done 8 hours work, so our times where not matching the other runners but we just wanted to have some fun as we knew we would not be in the championship hunt this year. Even with old tyres, our times were up there with the other top B grade teams and looking good for a strong finish until one of the motors died, blocked jet. Lost a few laps but finished a respectable 4th in B grade.

Race 2 and all was going well, times were good, matching it with the other B grade runners, tyres still good (thankfully the Birel is extremely kind on tyres). All 3 drivers enjoying the way the kart was going and racing was fun again, Chris was flying. Then the first incident occurred. Once again a Briggs & Stratten powered kart decided that he wanted to overtake me while going into a corner after I had already committed and had the racing line deep into the corner. The result was his front wheel buried deep into my side pod (just in front of the rear tyre). This resulted in a snapped side pod bracket. Fair dinkum, how dumb are some of these guys, they have way more power/speed than the Honda powered karts so why do they continually insist on trying to pass deep into corners? What makes it worse is they continually do it and get away with it. As they say ‘when the helmut goes on the brain turns off’!

Back on track we were running in 3rd in B Grade (only due to some other teams having fatal problems), when our luck once again run out. A broken clutch spring ended our day with 4 minutes to go (is it a coincidence that it was the same side as the broken side pod bracket?). One of my favourite sayings is ‘Ah well, such is life’ (courtesy of Ned Kelly) in this case it was ‘Ah well, such is racing’. With only one motor running we were not allowed back on track. These are the rules brought about due to the speed difference of a one engined Honda to a Briggs & Stratton powered kart and I agree with the rule due to safety reasons. Some other teams/drivers may be under the impression that I (the team) was upset with not being allowed back out. This was not the case, I asked one of the officials to clarify the rule while our kart was still in the pits and he confirmed that it was not allowed back on the track with one motor. I was happy with that, while disappointed at not being able to finish I was not angered by not being able to go back out on one motor. I was disappointed however, to find out that 1 maybe 2 karts finished on one motor and these teams were awarded points for finishing, that’s what angered me!

Anyway back to the rest of 2010. We were hoping to get some racing in this year but due to unforeseen circumstances such as family committments and work that clash with the race calendar, it looks like or year is already over.

The remaining TEKA rounds are:

• 13th/14th June at Dubbo – Not competing
• 24th/25th July at Newcastle – At this stage we will be competing
• 28th/29th August at Griffith – Not competing
• 17th October at Eastern Creek – At this stage we will be competing, and
• 20th/21st at Newcastle – Not competing

With the five remaining rounds we hope to compete at just 2.

Hope to see you at the track one day!

Gil

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