So when I heard that there was going to be a chance of racing for a whole 6Hr Endurance Race, I knew the boys that I had to call..... Mikey Brisenden and Ben Yiangou and we made up The Brentwood Boys.
We had a Quali Session which all 3 of us had to participate in, so we only got 10 minutes per person to put in the best Quali time possible. Both myself and Mikey had taken part in the Junior Pro Championship at Buckmore this year so we had plenty of experience around the track and I was crowned the Junior Pro Champion and Mikey was Vice Champion. Ben had raced here before in Club100 Karts and Owner Kart but he didn't have as much experience as us.
We ended up Qualifying on Pole and as a Team we decided that Mikey would start off the race for us, with Ben going out next, then myself. Buckmore is quite a physical track and none of us had really done endurance racing here, therefore we wasn't really sure where our limits would be. We said that we would go for 45 minute - 1 hour stints and see how we was fairing.
We should really have had radios for this long of a race but we didn't get them organised in time, so we resorted to good old fashioned hand signals down at the bottom end of the track. So at 45 minutes my mum went to the bottom of the track & gave a thumbs up with every lap to see of we needed to swap drivers with the next team member ready & in the pits to switch over. It was then time for the switch. We needed to time this correctly so that we didn't end up in a train of people waiting for refuelling & we could not have timed it more perfectly. Our first hand over & refuel was perfect and we was back on the track in no time. We was in the lead at the time of handing over but as we had to refuel we did lose the lead.
Mikey come off saying that he felt 45mins was probably as long as he would feel comfortable to go in 1 stint so we had this as a good marker for the rest of the team.
Ben's stint was next and we made up some great ground during this, other teams were pitting and refuelling and some of them were in a queue for fuel so we was making up good timings with him pumping in consistent good times.
Next up was my turn and we didn't need to refuel this stop, so we was good to go and it was a case of foot to the floor and keep clocking up the laps as we gradually increasing our lead. By the time it come to my hand over as a team we were now almost a lap ahead of our closest rivals but we did need to refuel so this would be slower, but again timed this well.
We all had another stint to do again and these were all varying in pace as we was now contending with 20 odd karts all on the track, all at varying stages of their races and at differing paces.
Some Much Needed Downtime With A Blanket, Naturally I Was Cold!
We was coming to the closing stages of the race and we still had a lap in hand over everyone else but the pace of the kart seemed to be dipping off slightly in relation to the team in P2 and they started making gains on us.
There was a bit of a miscommunication between us all & my mum had said that I didn't need to do a run around in order to get our minimum stops up but me & Mikey hadn't heard that & in the Pit Lane was saying that I would come into do the run around. On the first attempt to come into the Pits, I was told that I was speeding, so was sent back out & then I come in again to do it (which I totally didn't need to do). This could now have cost us the race and with over an hour left to go in the race our only option was to stay out till the end & try our best to fend off the team behind us.
This was when DISASTER struck..... our kart decided to breakdown at the bottom of the track and I was completely stranded & could do nothing but watch our competitors fly by and watch as their teammates celebrated on the sidelines. I was gutted. A Marshall arrived to rescue me and I was given his kart.
RIP
By this time I had been on the track for over an hour and we had now lost the lead of the race, we had nothing else to lose other than suiting Mikey back up for the final 38 minutes of the race and hope that a fresh kart and fresh driver could pull something out of the bag.
At the time of Mikey getting into the Kart we was just under 1 lap down but this kart had Rocket Fuel in it and now we knew why our times were all tailing off, it was because the kart was dying.
The stint that Mikey pulled off was incredible, we completed an amazing 425 laps, going from almost a lap down to winning the 6Hr Endurance Race by an incredible 7.613 seconds.
It was an absolute pleasure to race with these lads and our first ever long distance Endurance Race, not a bad way to finish!
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