vortex’s blog

What a day this turned out to be..

Arrived for the meeting and expecting that it would be a small field of karts racing, it turned out that it was Myself and the currrent Senior National Light State Champion, Matt Panella. I wasnt fussed that there was only 1 other driver as all I was concerned about was getting off my ‘P’ plates (a requirement because I had been out of the sport more than 3 years).

This SGKC meeting they were running 4 heats, 2 of 8 in normal Bolivar direction and then 2 of 8 in Reverse direction. Because we had a small number in our field, we were combined with the Clubman Over 40’s, which was an interesting combination

I was off Grid 2 for the first race and got the jump on Matt at the start and passed him around the outside in the first corner, but he fought back and passed me again in the 2nd corner. For the next few laps we were dicing with some of the Clubman karts, which was great fun

In Race 2 as we were sitting on the grid very very dark clouds were rolling in, and they started to dump water on the track as soon as we rolled out - everyone was on the track with full dry setups and slick tires! Most of the Clubman drivers appeared to be very inexperienced in the wet, and all slid off in the first two corners. Having raced in the wet in the past with slicks (last time I was racing wets were not allowed) I was an old hand at it It was a little greasy but i was able to get some decent speed out of it on the track. Matt skipped away a bit in the first few laps, but it started raining again half way through and he got caught out by the greasy track and spun out at Tysons, leaving me to win the 2nd heat.

3rd heat was held in reverse direction and because of time constraints and the previous very stormy weather, the 4th round was cancelled and the 3rd changed to 10 laps instead of 8. The track was quite wet but drying and everyone went out on full wets setup. In the first couple of laps I had it all over Matt but made a mistake when I passed him; because of the slippery track, and he was able to get back past me. In the next lap he was dicing with a Clubman kart which spun right in front of him and he unfortunantly had nowhere to go and crashed into him. I was able to go on and in the end beat 3 of the 4 remaining Clubmans on the track - which was great fun. Our wet setup seemed great and was handling like it was on rails!

Overall I won Senior National Light because luck was on my side,  but still I wouldn’t have won if I didn’t know how to drive in the wet A good way to get rid of my P Plates