Today, as promised by Dad, I returned to Shennington Race Circuit which is situated around 1 hour from my house. When I arrived I was greeted by a friendly and familiar face, John, his first words were, "Hello trouble..." this put a smile on my face from the word go!
I put my favourite suit on, the blue, white and yellow suit, I'm sure I was getting a frown from Marc Jacobs as he watched my fashion disaster unfold, but I really didn't care; I was happy! I got into a Junior Rotax Max (No. 11) and headed out for my first lap. I started off with a solid 44.14 seconds, which was already quicker than my best previous time of 44.97 seconds. I slowly improved my time and ended up getting down to 42.87 seconds, getting closer and closer to the half lap record held at Rissington Circuit!
During one of my breaks, a man approached me and introduced himself as Steve Chapman, a keen racing enthusiast, club chairman of Shennington & Wilton Mill and the developer and owner of a new kart called The Tyro (Is it just me that thinks that 'The Tyro' sounds quite intimidating and impressive?) Anyway, back to the point, I was asked to test drive his prototype model of The Tyro. Of course, I was so honoured at being asked and immediately accepted his offer! However things did not get off to a good start, on my first lap I pulled out in front of a slower kart and the driver was not impressed. He followed up the rear of my kart until the long straight at the far end of the circuit, and sneakily clipped my right rear hand tyre. This immediately caused both rear tyres to lock up and resulted in me losing complete control of the kart and ending up on the side of the hill unable to restart the kart.
Steve quickly rushed over and was laughing, he helped me down with the kart, got it restarted and let me on my way. When I got in after doing around 25 laps, Steve shook my hand and said "there are great things coming for you young lad." This gave me a lot of confidence to keep trying and eventually I would succeed and break my target of 41.50 seconds. Below is a picture of The Tyro prototype that I raced...
Around 15 minutes later, I went out for my next session, once again racing my new favourite kart, the Tyro prototype (No. 90). Once again, I didn't quite reach my target of 41.50 but I did improve and reduce my time to 42.62 seconds. At the end of my session, I was once again approached by an unfamiliar face, this time it belonged to Tom, the Shennington ARKS tester (ARKS is a racing test that allows you to participate in race meetings.) He asked me whether I would be interested in attempting the whole circuit, obviously I immediately agreed! I set out on the track once again in The Tyro and discovered that the second half of the track was not called the harder half for no reason, I agree with the re-naming of one of the corners as 'Hells-wish'!
Next time I race at Shennington (unfortunately not until May/June) I will hopefully get to my target of 41.50 seconds.
