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| EMAP Automotive Corporate Charity Event 28th September 2004 The phone rings....it's Steve from Biker Legal Line...."do you fancy entering a team into EMAP's charity go-karting event on Tuesday? It's for charity and we need you to beat Team MCN !" No worries we thought - that'll be no problem !
After a short safety briefing - no barging, no kerbing, no weaving, no bashing etc etc - spoiling every one of our plans! Mmm! We had 20 minutes of practice on the National circuit with the best lap time forming the starting grid. Our best lap of just over 1 minute dead put us in 7th place. At the green light we had 3 hours of endurance racing to complete - the team completing the the most laps within that time would win. At the first corner we were nudged from behind and into the grass - great! Into the pits for a mandatory checkout from the marshalls and then we were penalised 30 seconds for speeding in pit-lane! After the first hour
of the race Team TFR Racing were in 5th place with solid sub-minute laps
battling with Taylor Racing, MCN and Max Power car magazine. Grand Prix
Legends were running away with the race but Team Frasers, Performance Parts and
Team Parkers were still in touch. Stuart, Steve and Spanners were starting
to get into a nice groove sticking lap after lap in with
some slick pit stops for more fuel. Our team tactics of trying our best to
slow everyone else down (!) were beginning to work well...
Eventually we got the lap times down to 58 seconds with a best lap of 58.36 and completed a massive 162 laps over the 3 hour race finishing in 6th place in front of Team MCN and Max Power car magazine. If only we could have spent less time spinning off the track....! Team Performance Parts won the event on the last lap after a penalty for "dangerous driving" (!) just beating Grand Prix Legends into second place.
Between us we raised nearly £5000 for the humanitarian crisis in Sudan - well done all. Thanks to Sarah Thomas & Gareth Ashman from EMAP who did a fantastic job in organising the event. A great day! <BACK> |
Now
the last time we were in a go-kart was about 15 years ago at Blackpool Pleasure
Beach (!) but that wasn't going to spoil anything. £7,500 of advertising
was up for grabs for the winner, so off we went to search for the concrete cows
of Milton Keynes (a 4 hour trip from Cornwall) to sign in and register at
Daytona Raceway with Sarah Thomas, sales executive from EMAP - a huge
advertising company that look after MCN, Performance Bikes and RiDE
magazine. All the other teams were arriving and we suddenly realised that
our chances of winning this thing were, well, pretty hopeless! Grand Prix
Legends turned up with Team Performance Parts sporting their matching Sparco
overgarments and helmets! They obviously meant business and we later found
out that they could run at almost lap record speed! Taylor Racing had sent
the whole shop to "qualify" the weekend before! This called for
drastic new tactics - wide elbows and a close examination of the rule book to
see what we could get away with to gain any advantage!
We
got some tips from the local hero - "just floor it", he said. Well,
you can't say better than that!
Dean
Ellison put the fastest lap time in on the day with an
excellent 55.025 seconds for Team Frasers.