I took part in MyKART Mega Endurance Race 2005 held today, Saturday, January 8 at Shah Alam Circuit. The race saw 14 teams, and 56 racers - including two ladies, myself and my team mate, Haslina Ali.
My team is called "Mixed Doubles" as we're the only team with ladies in it. We did quite alright, finishing at ninth position, doing 85 laps and with best lap time of 1:15.658 - that's 4 seconds behind the lead team, who did 1:11.599 and 90 laps.
The teams, according to positioning were: Heavies, Cool It, Romeos, Fast & Furious, Mee Fook Yew, Tail Happy Racing, Underweights, Team 156, Mixed Doubles, Need 4 Speed Underground, Backmarkers, Botak Malat Wankel, Gila Racing and Initial D.
Four in a team - first driver is the anchor, second driver is the sprinter, third driver bridges the gap and fourth driver brings the flag home. As the fourth driver, the pressure was on me to finish the race and at the same time maintaining lap time, and never never to be out of the race by being side tracked or off tracked. Thankfully, I managed to live up to my team's expectation, despite the rain, which makes it more challenging.
Personally, for me it was an exciting and exhilarating experience racing in the rain, as go kart tyres have no "bunga" - they're smooth rubbers. So controlling your kart around slippery corners is quite challenging, and very tedious especially if you have to do that for at least 20 laps.
But despite all that, I'd do it again. I've become an adrenaline junkie - challenging myself to both vertical and horizontal limits. I have yet to plunge the ocean depths - maybe, one day! Anyways, my team beat Hafidz's team, "Need 4 Speed Underground" by one full second (they did 1:16.858), so I'm happy for now for beating the coach :)
By the way, Hafidz was runner up for MyKART Race Series 2004, (K2 category / 100cc) which is a series of monthly racing event.
Anyways...I hope I've enticed some of you to take up go karting - it's exciting and it's quite safe (as long as you adhere to the safety rules). Come visit us at www.my-kart.org and join our activities!
Saturday, January 08, 2005
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Well done Naliza.
Anis
One particular area we noticed that could do with better control is refuelling.
What the teams had to do was to indicate in the log book which pit-stop the (mandatory) refuelling was done. Before the start of the race, quite a few teams got word that even at 80% fuel tank capacity, we could run the whole duration of the race without having to refuel. Immediately we could see some teams filling up their fuel tanks! The team wasn't able to verify, but
we feel that an individual should be assigned specifically to oversee and verify that all the teams actually carried out the mandatory refuelling.
Then there was the slight confusion about the opening and closing of the pit windows. There is definitely room for improvement in that area.
Being a shoe-string budget team, we couldn't afford to carry out 'last-minute driver contract negotiations'. If one or more of our drivers didn't, or turned up late, the team would have proceeded with whatever
resources it had at that time (when team registration is up), and faced whatever penalties that were to be imposed. We feel that the time given to finalize the team line-up was sufficient, without the need to add drama on race day. If teams were imposed penalties for changing karts, we feel the same should apply for changing drivers.
Well, those are the few points we thought the organizers could look into at the next enduro meet. One thing for sure, in the meantime Backmarkers will strive to improve our lap times...
Ciao!
hazry.daud@marconi.com
Post a Comment