So, yesterday we went back to Rye House and both me and the eldest had a go. He went on the K Karts and I went on an hours GP. Once again he thoroughly enjoyed his half hour session, met another little boy there, they chatted, they didnt really race (one had a half lap head start for starters), but at this moment, I am discouraging racing to a point. I want him to be confident driving around with the weight of the helmet and full suit on. Concentrating on how the track looks when driving, where to drive etc. He wants to win, he likes to win but I am trying to manage expectations!
My go was first and this time was completely different to last time. Last time there were 4 of us on track, this time 23! And 22 of them were experienced at Rye House from what I could gather. Anyway, I know I am nowhere near competitive yet, I have a lot of work to do to get there. I want to be competitive so that I can pass down my knowledge and experience to both the boys. At least the track was dry this time.
So qualifying started and with 23 of us on track it was somewhat of a lesson. Karts were spinning left right and centre. I felt I struggled getting a clean lap (no yellows) but needless to say I plodded on. I am not sure what time I set in qualifying but I was 18th on the grid. The race started and I seemed to be doing OK. I didnt spin out (think I was the only one not to), there was no first turn incident and when there was an incident at the first hairpin, I just drove round the outside of it. Half hour in to the race and alarm bells rang. I hadnt slept well and suddenly felt extremely tired, and skipping breakfast meant I felt sick. So before I ended up with a visor full of vomit or causing an accident, I called it a day after just over half hour racing (the race was 45 minutes).
So what did I learn from my experience? Well, first of all, breakfast is key along with getting a good nights sleep. I knew my qualify time from the first time there was 50 seconds before the rain came down, I knew where I was losing a lot of time (chickening out on the first bend). This time, I didnt break for the first bend and only lifted for the kink before the last hairpin and got my time down to 44s. I’ll take that as a massive positive. I am still 5 seconds off the all time record and was about 3 seconds off the leaders pace in my race but I’ll still take it! One thing I did notice was that either I was over cautious in the yellow flag zones or I was the only person taking note. Maybe it was because (in rallying) I’ve been that person in high vis so I was showing a little more respect but I was lapped a couple of times in the yellow areas.
After we had both finished racing, we spent a fair bit of time in the New Kart shop that is on site. This proved to be invaluable for us and our journey in to karting. After discussions with Nick on site, we are now looking at a package deal with everything we need to get started. Hopefully soon the finances will be in place and the eldest will have had a go in a petrol kart and our journey will really begin!
The kid seems very excited. I am feeling excited for him. We all love being at Rye House, we have found all of the staff to be very helpful, polite, friendly and most importantly invested. The track is full of history and so far away from my intial thinking of it will be a track in a field somwhere.
I’ve done Excel sheets for tracking expenses, and timings when it becomes appropriate I will make them available to read, but for now, I’ll just keep researching.
