Having been out of the racing seat for several years and minimal time in a go-kart in the last 5 years got me concerned when I represented the Porsche Club for the annual inter-car club Go kart endurance race. The odds were stacked against my team which was made up of former go-kart champions and hobby go-kart racers and we had to race against professionals who were active Touring car race drivers and former regional go-kart champions.
Looking ahead at the event endurance go-kart race is about consistency and reliability rather than outright speed. One of the drivers having the ability to put in super fast lap times every now and then will not cut it if the remainder of the team is slow. Finishing the race was also key to having the chance to win the race. We had to formulate our strategy in order to remain in the hunt.
Qualifying started and we qualified 4th in a field of 7 teams. Not good and not bad either. The top 3 positions were filled by teams who fielded professional drivers as expected. The crunch time came when the race started. Our objective was to always remain on the lead lap and never get ourselves one lap down. Driver 1 did a sterling job to keep our team on the lead lap and maintained our position of 4th overall when he came in for the driver change. Next up I had to take the driving honours and make sure that we remained in the hunt and not drop off a lap down. The other teams also chose to pit and change drivers.
The pressure was on me to made sure nothing goes wrong and not to wreck the kart. During my stint I was able to gain some advantage and passed 4 drivers (at this stage we unsure the positions of the other drivers) and made up ground and moved our team up to 2nd overall. Our 3rd driver once again continued the job and passed another 2 drivers (again not sure about the positions of other drivers) and moved us up to 1st.
Things started to get interesting as other teams started to have problems with their karts and were not pushing consistent lap times.On the second half of the race things got heated up as our team kept trading positions with 2 teams.
With the race coming to a close in 11 minutes we were 2nd overall but we had already done all our mandatory pit stops and the lead time still had to make their last pit stop. This gave us the advantage and our last drive was crucial to stay in the lead. The first team pitted and lost more than 30 seconds to us and were unable to make up ground.
On a day where we faced an uphill battle, our strategy and consistency prevailed and got us the trophy.
