Brentwood Race League - Season 6 - Round 12

So here we go, we’re back at Brentwood for the final round of the Season, where anything could happen! Dzuigas & Ethan we’re battling for the top spot & I was battling Ben for the 3rd spot.

My Quali was just horrific, I managed to get myself stuck in the middle of a pack on the quali lap & although I got myself out of it I had to take the long way round them & only managed to quali 8th out of 9 people, which I actually think is my worst ever quali. The only comfort was the fact that I knew the kart had more pace than the quali time I set & hoped to make my way through.

I got off to a good start & made up an initial few places, then got stuck behind someone, eventually got past but was held up for too long & by the time I cleared them had no chance of catching the front runners so ended up finishing 4th, not my best performance but at least I would be starting on pole in the second heat.

The second heat was a rolling start, I got a really good get away and quickly started pulling a small gap from the following pack. The race was pretty straightforward & claimed the win, securing the maximum 12 points that I desperately needed for my heat win. So I had secured a 1st & 4th finishing positions which put me in good shape for the A Final starting 3rd.

My Championship rival won last week so I knew that he had a 5 place grid penalty & he didn’t win any of his heats so I had closed the gap & needed to see what happened with his Final. He didn’t make it out of the B Final so his lowest points score of 21 come back into play. With some quick calculations we worked out that I needed to finish 6th or above in the A Final to secure my first Championship Podium.

Well you guessed it, it didn’t happen! I had a really good start & got myself into 2nd. I then ended up with an ABC which meant that I had to go to the back of the pack, with only 4 minutes left of the final I didn’t have the time to pull much back & the best I could manage was an 8th place finish and just 2 points short of what I needed, I was devastated.

This season at Brentwood has been really difficult in a number of ways. To start with I didn’t get off to the best of starts with Round 1 not even making it out of the B Final & only scoring 14 points. From that initial round I knew I had a real uphill battle. When I look back at my historic championship results I’ve always started strong and somewhere near the end lost my way a bit, but all the time learning as I was going along.

Then just before Christmas I tested positive for Covid & had to miss a round, therefore having scored 0 points.

With Brentwood’s League the Season runs for 12 weeks in total, but 2 of your lowest points scoring rounds are discounted, therefore in effect it is a 10 week championship. By having those 2 bad rounds I couldn’t afford any mistakes.

When I look back at the results table, I can honestly say I think this season has been my strongest to date, I’ve won more podiums, my defensive & attacking drives have improved but Sunday just didn’t happen for me. To say that this defeat hurt is an understatement, I had given everything I had but it just wasn’t enough. As my homepage says this website shows the highs & lows of karting & today was certainly a high & very low day.

Huge congratulations to Dzuigas, Ethan & Ben on their podium finishes & maybe next season I'll get there.