Twelve drivers & four 'teams' made up the grid for the first in a series of F1-inspired races taking place at TeamSport Bristol over the summer. As mentioned in a previous post, I would be teaming up with the young Polish driver Krystian Matuszkiewicz under the banner of KB Racing- with the aim of winning the 'teams' championship & hopefully one of us finishing in the top 3 overall. Several other TeamSport regulars made up the other drivers & teams, including Jeremy Woodward, Andy George, Ben Winter & Brad Collins, & Zac Venn with Dan Healey.
The event format was a fairly straight-forward affair; a 20-minute 'knockout' qualifying session where only the fastest drivers remain at the end (very F1!) followed by a 30-minute sprint race with 1 mandatory stop & go pitstop. All drivers would be out on track competing together, & each would score individual points as well as 'team' points if paired with another driver.
As usual with these type of events, I knew qualifying would be key to getting a good result. With the race being only a half-hour long, there wouldn't be much time to fight through from the back, so I fully intended to do my best in order to help out my team-mate near the front of the field. I felt more confident at least with the qualifying format- I've never been great at single lap qualifying & this at least gave the drivers a chance to find a good rhythm in the karts that they would also be using in the race.
Each driver had his or her kart pre-allocated before the event. I found myself in kart #2, whilst Krystian was in #1. The rules stated that during the mandatory pit stop, you had to change karts, so depending on when you come in, you may get a 'cold' kart or, leave it late enough, one that someone else had just been using.
As it turned out, qualifying didn't go so well for me, with my best time only being good enough for 7th place, behind TeamSport returnee Dan Healey & just ahead of Jeremy. I took some consolation from starting on the outside of the grid as that tends to favour drivers starting further back. Krystian however had qualified an excellent 2nd, whilst Zac grabbed pole by over 1/2 sec in true Lewis Hamilton-style! Game on.
At the start, most of the field got away cleanly, apart from one driver who was tapped into a spin in the first few corners which brought out the yellow flag, allowing the field to bunch up for a rolling restart. I found myself behind staff driver Rebecca Steadman, with Dan in front of her & already looking to make his way to the front. After several laps testing Rebecca's defences, it was evident I wasn't going to get past even though I was marginally quicker (she was able to get off of the slow corners quicker than I was) I decided to pit & try to 'undercut' her- the idea being that whilst the drivers ahead are battling & therefore losing time, I'd be I'm clear air (hopefully) putting in good lap time which would allow me to leap-frog the drivers ahead when they made their stops. That's the theory anyway! Meanwhile, Krystian was giving Zac a run for his money at the front, whilst Ben Winter was also in the fight for the podium.
After my pitstop, I found myself in kart #14 & circulating in clean air- which although is generally an advantage, it does make it harder go gauge your pace relative to others. It did however seem that, lap by lap, I was matching Krystian & Dan, more or less, which I could tell by checking their position relative to mine on the circuit. After another short yellow-flag period, drivers started to make their mandatory pit stops, & I found myself climbing up the order.
From that point on my race was fairly quiet until about 15 minutes from the end, when Dan Healey made his stop & came out a couple if seconds ahead of me. I did my best to stay with him, aware that Zac was coming up to lap me having yet to make his stop. I'd felt that my new kart had been losing power a bit over the last couple of laps, particularly on the up ramp, & as we came off the flyover my engine almost cut out, before losing loads of power as I tried to accelerate away from the corner on to the main straight. I stuck my hand in the air & went off line to indicate I had a problem, Zac came past & just as the yellow flags came out again, my kart picked up & I was away again at almost full speed. Although I didn't actually lose any positions in the end, it did stop me from having any chance of staying with Dan until the end of the race.
As we entered the final 10 minutes, the red flags were brought out by Healey's kart grinding to a halt through the esses. Unfortunately for his team-mate Zac, who had chosen that lap to pit & change karts as everyone was sat still! He was penalised & made to re-do his stop, but he had such an advantage over Krystian it didn't impact on his race. By the time the chequered flag came out, Dan had actually managed to climb all the way up to 3rd having started 7th, & I crossed the line in 5th having gained 3 positions during the race. I had Zac all over me for the last 5 minutes but I'd tried to make things difficult for him on the hope he may make a mistake which Krystian could capitalise on- of course I claimed after that I didn't know it was Zac I was defending against!
This is the final finishing order for the race:
1. Zach Venn
2. Krystian Matuszkiewicz
3. Dan Healey
4. Daniel Good
5. Ben Churchill
6. Rebecca Steadman
7. Mark Smith
8. Jeremy Woodward
9. Ben Winter
10. Jason Petherick
11. Andy George
12. Brad Collins
This obviously leaves Zac at the top of table after Round 1, with my team mate Krystian in 2nd ahead of Dan Healey, who is yet to commit to the whole series. The 'teams' points looks like this:
1. Blue Bull
2. KB Racing
3. GW Racing
4. Jecky GP
5. Relentless Racing
6. Gotham Team Racing
The next round takes place on Wednesday 17th June, where Krystian & I will again be looking to maximise points scoring in our bid to take the Teams Championship- watch this space!
See you at the track soon
Ben
No comments:
Post a Comment