Tom's Race Log
Go Kart Racer Practice (6/14/2008)
On being a big fish in a small pond
Tom's Race Log
Go Kart Racer Practice (6/14/2008)
On being a big fish in a small pond
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It's been three months since I was last on the Yokohama track. The time off showed. I was not sharp. There were many external factors that conspired to slow me down. I know I'm not suppossed to let these thing interfere with my performace, but the did. They were out of fat guy karts so I was put into a "red" kart. These have ten pounds of balast added. When I sat down my belly was almost hitting the steering wheel. The seats are adjustable but I thought I leave it that way and see if it made any difference. It did. While it made the steering a bit easier it also made the kart seem jittery. Having the seat forward also put me feet harder into the pedals. I had a hard time being smooth. I was also wearing thick-soled shoes which cut way down on my feel of the pedals. Then as the session started there was this loud rattling whenever I turned left. It turns out that the right clip on the helmet visor came loose. I also quickly found that my seating position severely changed the handling of the kart. Apparently the majority of my weight was towards the front so under breaking the rear end kept trying to come around. After a few laps I got used to this and found that I could use this to my advantage getting the kart to rotate through the sharper corners. Not the fastest way around, but fun. Once again I seem to be describing a horrible race. I actually had way much fun and managed to lap all the other karts twice. The best pass was the last one. I was catching up the last kart pretty quickly but with just a few corners to go he was still several kart lenghts ahead of me. Just as I was telling myself that it was OK that I didn't lap everyone twice, he slowed down. The flag man was waving the checkered flag and the kart ahead of me came to a stop just before the finish line. I don't know what he was thinking, but he was pissed when he realized what had happened. He passed me on the cool-down lap and gave me a nasty look.
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