We had a good base set up and throughout the morning adjusted it to my liking - I initially struggled with understeer until we widened the width of the front tracking until the kart would turn in, we added 40mm using 5 mm spacers (2 each side) in 10mm increments - this transformed the kart and I was able to improve on my early lap times by over 3 seconds.
On the race day I was just itching to get out there and actually have a go - there were no nerves, I hadn't put any pressure on myself by setting unrealistic targets, my only targets were to finish every race (4 during the day) and set a laptime under 40 seconds (I had managed a 40.2 during testing).
As I am a novice I have to start at the back of the first 3 races, in this case 14th.
Race 1 was a bit of an eye opener but it went pretty much as expected - I gained a couple of places after taking advantage of other karters mistakes and finished 11th.
Race 2 was a disaster as someone spun in front of me and I had to take avoiding action onto the grass which dropped me far behind the pack although I did set a 40.0 lap time I was dead last in 14th.
Race 3 was my best of the day, I was able to hang on to the mid pack for a while and it was only my inexperience and inconsistent lap times which slowly dropped me back, I finished 9th and set a 39.98 lap time - that was one target acheived!
Race 4, A final - I started 13th as the A final starting position is a combination of the 3 heats finishing places, I just kept my head and out of trouble - I set a 39.90 lap time and came home in 12th place, I had survived my first kart meeting!
Overall I am delighted with how the weekend went, we made changes which worked on the chassis and my driving steadily improved over the whole weekend, I will be taking part in the next round of the Hoddesdon Kart Club Winter Championship at the start of March and I cant wait!
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