We are back for Round 7 of the Championship and earlier on in the week I had a 1-2-1 lesson with Dan to try and get some pointers and was also joined on track with Mikey who was looking for some advice too. We had a great session, albeit a little bit chilly, but was ready and raring to go for Round 7.
We headed out for the Quali session and at the moment I'm just really struggling with Quali. It's not like the cadets where you had a 1 lap shoot out, so really this should be easier as we get a 5 minute session to get the best possible time but it just doesn't seem to be working for me. A few rounds back my mum had a go at me as she said that I spent too much time fighting with other people on track for position rather than backing off to get myself space, so this round I was going to do things differently.
The kart just really didn't feel like it had the pace of others and as soon as they was past they was off into the distance and I was almost 1.5 seconds off of the pace. I took a quick glance over to mum after the chequered flag and she covered her eyes..... never a good sign. When I come to a stop outside the pits to head to the grid the kart cut out, so I knew that this was going to be a challenging race and I was starting P11 out of 12, just awful, mum wasn't joking when she covered her eyes!
Heat 1 was a rolling start and I knew that I had a mountain to climb from the back of the grid but just had to keep my head down and battle through. Off the line quite a few people were pushed wide and with me being on the inside, I took full advantage of this and made up some good initial positions, quickly finding myself in P5. It was only a few laps later that disaster struck when I found out the reason for the lack of pace in the kart..... the belt had gone for the 2nd week in a row on me, you just couldn't make it up. I was put back into position in the race with a new kart but again it was cold with the minutes ticking away and went from P5 down to P9.
Next up was Heat 2 and I had no idea why I started so low down the grid, I thought that with the bad result in the first heat and the fact that I'm lower in the league table I would have started higher, but I was starting out in P9 and I drew the kart that broke down on me in last weeks final - great.
It was a reverse track, rolling start and the start was just horrendous, the kart went nowhere and I was just smacked left, right and centre round the first corner, but managed to keep it in the right direction and was just a case of getting on with it now. I was held on the outside and in doing so we both lost out on 3 places, this was just getting worse by the minute and the kart just had no intentions of turning at points. I think ABC's should have been issued in that race, but none were given which resulted in me finished P10.
Due to the poor results on the day I was in the C Final, starting out P4. It was only a small final but needed a win to progress to the B Final. I lost out on a position straight off of the line, but managed to slot in and was hoping to battle back from there. In the end there was so much time wasted battling through the middle of the race that the leaders just headed off into the distance and I managed to get back to the starting position of P4 but another early finish for me on a Sunday.
Onto Round 8 & hopefully a round where there are no further karts that can break down on me.
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