Kartmaster British Karting Grand Prix
The first weekend weekend in August was the biggest race of the year, a stand alone event with the winner getting the coveted GP plate to put on their kart and the top ten getting a place to the World Finals.
Tom’s record at this event has been very good, 2nd and 6th in the past two years.
Testing on Thursday went well, keeping pace with the fastest karters. However, his two best engines developed problems and so Tom was forced to use his back-up third engine for the weekend.
Friday Qualifying went well, but with such a strong field finishing two tenths of a second behind the leader put him down in 17th out of 50. The heats showed he had strong pace, however. Being 12th in both, he was up in 5th in the first heat only to be knocked off the track with two corners to go – finishing 13th. In the second heat he had another fine drive to finish a respectable 6th.
Saturday Qualifying again went well, with 4th in group and 7th overall, less than two tenths off pole, starting 5th for his two heats. In the first heat after a slow start he flew through his opposition to chase down the lead bunch of three – pulling off a fantastic manoeuvre to grab 3rd with two corners to go. The second heat saw another mature drive and he finished 6th.
Overall classification following the two day’s heats would be 7th for the Pre-Final. It was a hard fought race and he struggled slightly with the set up of the kart, finishing 10th – which would be his start position for the Gand Prix final.
The Final was a fifteen minute affair and was the last race of the weekend, a large number of spectators along with the whole paddock had come out to watch the biggest race of the year and they were not disappointed. Tom had a great start and was up to 6th by the end of the first lap, this quickly became 5th and he was breaking away in with the lead bunch of drivers.
Things were looking good with a minute to go as he was lying 4th. the race became scrappy – the top 12 karts all fighting for the top position. A late move on Tom pushed him slightly down the order but he still finished a very creditable 8th place at the line, only 2.6 seconds behind the winner.
The 8th place means it qualifies him for the British team for the World Finals in Le Mans, France in October.
Images – Kartpix
