February 2, 2009

First win in 2009!

Recently the Brunswick karting team entered the Dennis Smith memorial race at Surbiton Raceway in South London.

The race is organised by former Brunswick racer Dave Smith who originally made his name playing cricket for England.

The race would consist of 2 hours racing with a fuel stop on the hour, 11 teams took part with some current racing drivers and a few local teams who were very familiar with the circuit.

We qualified 3rd on the grid with myself taking the first 20 minute stint, it was a cold day with a damp circuit which was interesting on the slick tyres!

After my stint we had the lead and although I wasn't setting the fastest lap I was using my karting experience to keep out of trouble.

The next driver Michael De Cock (otherwise known as Mick the Dick) set about keeping our lead and all was going to plan until he commited an offence by overtaking under yellow flags, this got our kart sin binned for 2 minutes, he did a further lap before pitting to allow the next driver to get in - we had now dropped to 3rd place for our troubles.

The third driver was Giles Groombridge, commercial director of Brunswick Automotive - Giles put in a solid stint without issue and brought the kart back in 3rd place.

After the fuel stop at 60 minutes Giles brought the kart back in for another driver change, I jumped in and set about getting those lost places back, It was a good stint and again I used my head to keep out of trouble, it was hard going with the quicker karts catching the slower ones in all the wrong places, I tried to be patient and only overtake when it was an easy move and wouldn't hinder my momentum - this seemed to work as after my 15 minute stint we were back in the lead again.

Giles took the kart out next and after having a great session managed to get tangled up with another driver who rather sneakily punted him off the circuit causing the kart to stall so Giles had to pull the kart back onto the circuit and start the engine himself - we called him in shortly after as his visor had steamed up!

I took the kart out for a 2 lap stint to get our 5th driver change in before handing over to Mick for our mandatory 6th and final driver change.

Giles's accident had dropped us 1 lap and Mick had to charge hard to catch the leaders, we were 3rd with 15 minutes to go - it was going to be close!

The gap between Mick and the leaders was dropping all the time, it wasnt small amounts of time, it was chunks - we could visually see the lead diminishing every lap!

Mick did well to keep his nerve and the teams patience paid off when the leaders were involved in an accident whilst only a couple of seconds in front, Mick picked his way through the carnage and stretched his lead in the remaining minutes to win by around 3 seconds!

It was a great day that raised £350 for cancer charity, the team thoroughly enjoyed itself and look forward to competing for the trophy again next year!


From left, Mick, Wayne, Dave Smith, Giles

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