I think the best aspect of the invite was I got a half day off work to travel up to the Big Kart track at Landsborough on the Sunshine Coast. We arrived and had a 20 minute warm up, and I must say I was totally unimpressed with the karts! The fact I could drive around the whole track without lifting my foot off the gas took the whole 'driving' aspect from racing, so if you're kart was faster you'd win, because there are no braking areas and cornering speeds are all the same.
However after the warm up we were told that if anyone wanted ago on the Bungy Bullet that it was available to us as well. So I took up the chance to be shot 50m into the air at 400km/h with the force of 4Gs in about 1 second! What an experience! The initial launch was fantastic, the resulting bungy bouncing up and down was a bit of fun, but became a litte sickening after about a minute - I was glad to get my feet back on the ground eventually.
We then had dinner, and headed back down to the track for heats to qualify for the Avaya Krazy Kart Chapmionship. I won my heat, I had a decent kart and got a great jump at the start of the race, so I made it into the main race. I scored a semi-decent kart for the race, but there were 3 karts much faster than mine. Lucky for me one of them driven by a good mate got caught up in an incident on the first lap so I was in
third for most of the race.It was infuriating watching the 2 guys ahead of me slowly pulling away, and seeing Ryan coming up behind me getting closer every lap. Eventually Ryan caught me, and as we were coming down the straight I knew he'd pass me and I'd miss out on getting trophy, however that lap we were given the 'one lap to go' signal and I swore I wouldn't let him pass me for that lap.
What ensued was a fierce battle with lots of bumping and scraping, until the last 2 corners where Ryan pulled along side of me, however cause he was on the outside of the track I drove into the last 2 corners pushing him really wide. Without me knowing, coming onto the main straight Ryan reached out, grabbed my kart and tried to pull me back out of the way - in doing so he locked his front wheel between my front and rear. Not able to pass me because he was
locked in, he tried to move over, me seeing this pushed him right up against the tyre wall so he had no room to free himself. We then raced down the straight locked together - Ryan took out about 4 tyre stacks - and I got 3rd place by about 15cm!!! There was much laughter and good spirits between us, and the rest of the RACQ team after that one. But I'm glad I got that 3rd place trophy - it was hard fought for.We were then given the chance to just go back out on the track and do laps - which we did non stop for over an hour! They may not have been the best karts, but we sure did get a good go on them - 3 RACQ guys, including myself got the 3 fastest karts in that session and just had a lot of fun racing each other.
There was however an incident once we tried drifting the whole track - a mate, Brian, was drifting in front of me, and he spun - without any room to get out of the way I slammed straight into the side of his kart. Because I was braking, and bracing on the wheel I hurt my ankle, and shoulder... and Brian was holding his leg, and looked in a lot of pain. As we coasted down a straight I was sure I'd broken his leg (the force had brocken the front bar off my kart) - but he kept driving, and seemed ok eventually.
Friday at work we were chatting about it and Brian had some decent bruises on his leg, he was lucky I think. Friday, Saturday and today I've been pretty sore - my lower back hurts as well, so I've been feeling a bit worse for wear, and sorry for myself.
But even so - it was a great night of fun!
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