So this evening we ended up at a brand new track...... Rye House. I have been entered into the 2023 Jenson Cup here which is starting in March this year, so we headed down for a Practice Session of the Short Hairpin & Long Hairpin Track as I have never been here before.
The first thing I noticed about the karts was there was seatbelts! Having never raced in karts with belts, this in itself was going to be a new experience as they was so restrictive. I'm not sure I was a fan of these to be honest as I like to move around a bit and it even made it difficult to turn to see if anyone was on the outside of you.
I was first on the grid and had no clue what I was heading into and this was very evident from my first lap, where I lost it at the first corner - ha ha, I blame the cold tyres. These karts were nothing like the SodiKarts I'm used to racing, with the Brentwood Karts you can flick the wheel and send it round the corner, these you flicked & you spun.... we won't be doing that again! Once I had a few laps under my belt, I started to work out what I needed to do and started climbing up the table. I was hovering around the P2, P3 mark and then I found the line and was sitting at the top of the time sheet in P1, or should I say Jake Stedman was at the top.
In the 2nd session I was asked to swap karts, so was put into Kart 3 this time out and it was the long hairpin track. Things started off really positively, that was until I didn't realise where the long hairpin actually was and almost killed myself in the barrier, my bad! Once I realised where this was, the long hairpin track fast become my favourite track. You got so much extra momentum coming out of this, it was great. I think I actually led this session for the majority of it and was by far my favourite one.
My Track Records For:
Short Hairpin Track - 45.581
Long Hairpin Track - 49.932
Let's see how much we can improve on these times over the season.
All in all, I really enjoyed my first time at Rye House. I felt the karts were really even and the track was really fun to race. The league actually starts in February during the half term, but I am away on holiday and this is a non-point scoring round, so really it doesn't start until March. Really looking forward to the start of this Championship.
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