Karting Champ!

The men's ministry night for the City North Baptist blokes was great fun last night. We headed off to Archerfield Karts for a night of manly head to head racing.

I'm use to heading out karting with some blokes from Ipswich who are insanlly good at it, so without them around I was hoping for a good result in the final race.

I had a hiccup with one of the pace cars in practice... I was following a guy who was a tad faster than me, and he saw the pace car and I didn't... after some evasive action I spun and was sitting in the middle of the hairpin - just as Waz came round and forgot the back of his kart is wider than the front... his rear wheel drilled my kart and knocked me sideways hard - I have a nice big lump on my back today where I was slammed back into my seat.

I qualified 4th fastest (but hey I'm probably 10-20Kgs heavier than the faster blokes), and headed into the race quietly confident I could pass and then hold the lead.

I was in second place by the first corner and then spent the rest of the race swapping 1st and 2nd with young Josh Burstow. We had a great dual with him getting me out of the hairpin and me able to carry much more speed onto the straight for overtaking and sliding up under breaks to pass. The whole 15 laps were spent trying to pass and loose Josh, except I couldn't loose him and I'd end up having to chase and pass him again.

In the end though I was able to get a little gap, and then trying to hard Josh almost spun on the hairpin giving me a comfortable 1.5sec win!

For a 17 year old Josh showed a lot of maturity on the track... he didn't make any silly passing moves, and was really patient, knowing which part of the track he was faster and waiting to have a passing go there.

I really enjoyed it - the win was awesome :-) - but also I got to meet a group of the older men at the church whom I haven't really had any chance to get to know before... so all in all a fantastic night!