P&S Answers

[Plane And Simple]

Couldn't pick any other colour lol

[Plane And Simple]

So, as I said, Sunday the 27th we travelled to Karting Sevilla for April's round of the AKEX Championship. Day was scheduled to consist of 5 minutes of qualifying and 2 races of 15 and 20 minutes, first one in the normal direction of the track and second in reverse layout.

I was chill coming in as I tend to do pretty well in this track. We raffled karts as always and went to qualify. As soon as I got out on track I noticed that the seat was moving backwards, shifting the weight a lot and causing me to lose front grip completely so I spent all 3 qualy laps readjusting it on the straights, which was hard as we men cannot multitask lol. In the end, I qualified 14th out of 16, pretty far from where I should be anyhow, but it's whatever.

First race underway and I had practically no grip, no matter what I did, both front and back but worse at the front. This made me unable to fight for much. I was thinking I was kind of debating wether it was me driving like shit, because I had zero grip. I would turn in and all I'd hear is tire screech. In spite of that, I finished P13, gaining a position with a kart that, looking at the results of the second race after swapping, had more issues than I initially anticipated, as it finished at the back too. As usual, learned a lot about how to deal with karts like this, but still not enough.

In the second race the starting grid was the finishing order of race 1, so P13 for me. On the lap to the grid I could already tell this kart felt much better than the previous one, so I was hoping to be able to fight a bit higher up. Flag went down (lights turned green), and on the second lap a driver went to the grass in front of me after he outbraked himself and understeered in. Very atypical of him as he's usually a very good driver. Not giving way to the pack that was coming, as he stood in the gas waiting to rejoin parallel to us, but caught a big oversteer and didn't catch it back, he hit me and I spun out, going from P12 to last place. Race Ruined?

Right when I settled the kart again, the last 2 drivers were coming. About 5 seconds is the time I had from sheer anger to "okay, calm down". I sit for 2 more seconds to allow the last racer to pull past and I gun it back on track. Comeback mode's on. 3 solid laps after, I start to catch the drivers in front and overtake without too much difficulty thankfully. Study them well for a couple turns and try to attack where I know I do well. Race goes on, and we keep catching up to people and pulling through, from P16 to P7. For the first time, a position worth celebrating, since I have pretty much done a race with 2 laps less than the rest of the drivers. I do admit my kart was one of the top5 ones, but I'll pat myself on the back for that one.

Video coming when my shit internet gives me a break

Just because yall liked the previous video. Here's this race's one. Recorded and voiced over months ago but here it is:

[CDMC]

Couldn't pick any other colour lol

it fits

[Maxidyne]

Great video and great commentary, loved it! Keep them coming.

I'm maybe going racing again in July with a friend in a Radical SR3. Need to renew my racing licence.

[CDMC]

nice way of saying i will beat everyone on the track

[Plane And Simple]

Great video and great commentary, loved it! Keep them coming.

I'm maybe going racing again in July with a friend in a Radical SR3. Need to renew my racing licence.

Thats crazy! I'd love to race bigger stuff but for now I'm broke so...

[Plane And Simple]

So last weekend I had the second race for the regional social rental championship. Race 1 I didn't post about but an unlucky kart left me with like P7 or something. Pretty bad. Not like I mind, I'm here for fun, but yeah, not really worth posting about.

For today's weekend we went somewhere I know well and I expected a good result. I knew which karts work better and which ones worse as I had already been there last month (I don't think I posted that one, I won it. Sorry I'm all over the place). With that, as usual, 10 minutes free practice, 10 minutes qualifying and 15 lap race, which at about 50 seconds a lap, is just shy of 12 minutes.

In practice the kart felt pretty good. Good grip, turn in and brakes. It did hesitate a lot when going off the throttle and getting back into it but I found an easy solution: go less off the throttle lol. In all seriousness, I could work around it well with it's good grip, so I did. P1 almost the whole 10 minutes but P2 in the end when the fastest driver found himself comfortable with the kart.

Qualifying went almost the same way as practice. No changes, just a bit more seat time. P1 almost all of it to be P2 in the end. I saw on last month's race that kart 3 had at least a second per lap of a lead over others (at least with me driving it lol) and this guy kept it around 0.5-0.8 per lap, so he definitely knew what he was doing. P1 for him, P2 for me, and P3 for another guy (Ray) I couldn't even fight last year as he was very fast. Our karts were super even and I got to be in front for the whole weekend, just barely though, every time I did a 49.15 he did a 49.17, and it was like that on almost every lap. +- 0.02 for him or me indisctintively.

Race was very good. At the start I had to come up with a plan as kart would massively bog when going on throttle. Found out that due to wear I could brake and accelerate at the same time so as soon as lights came on, I floored it, letting it to it's thing for a second, for it to be ready to get off the line perfectly fine when I let go off the brake. Held onto P2 pretty well on first laps, just dropped to P3 on turn 1 due to traffic and caught it back up with Ray tagging behind within the lap. After a couple laps of tagging along and trying to hold on to the back of the P1 driver for dear life, I realised my job was more of a defensive one towards Ray instead of an attack one towards P1, so I had to let him go as Ray started pushing a bit harder and I had to start defending.

What followed was 11-12 laps of pure insanity and pretty much equal times. He'd try to attack in a few places but as track is a bit narrow I was able to defend without loosing much time, thus avoiding him winning time over me and still keeping P2. We had a little racing incident on lap 5 where I oversteered while he was on the inside, and he hit me almost spinning me around. As he was behind and didn't have the position he gave it back to me very kindly and I honestly went on to have the best or close to best fun racing I've had in a while. We spoke about the whole thing after and we both agreed it was insane.

Here's the stream. at 53:00 you see me arrive on the grid. At 57:00 the race starts.



Few pictures a friend took, too:

[Plane And Simple]

Something a bit different today. I don't know if I've posted about this guy I met in karting. We've raced together a few times. He's 14 and he's also racing on this thing called the Kobe Cup with Toyota Aygos with a moderate track setup (suspension, rims/tires, exhaust, intake, brakes, etc) and back in May I told him I would go watch him race. He loved to see me there first time and I really enjoyed seeing him progress and learn on track. He was racing again today in Jarama and I was planning to show up as well for that one, but I was going to have a little something to do Saturday so I told him I would probably just stop by and say hi.

In the end, I could move this little something to Sunday so I told him I'd be there Saturday morning (Schedule was 8:30AM-2PM). He was super happy (which I kind of didn't expect lol made me very happy too) and next day he messages me saying I'm coming over with his family to the garage+pitlane and if I wanted to he could get me a mechanic's pass with grid + pitwall access as well. I obviously said yes and told them everything they needed they could count on me for. I didn't want to get in the way as I'm very paranoid with race day routines and environment changes so I just worked on whatever was needed plus a bit of mental preparation as his dad told me he needs to hear some things "from a friend and not his dad".

His dad called me last night and told me show up time was 8:30, so off I went from my grandma's house (my aunt's now I guess as she doesn't live anymore, but it's still grandma's lol). Got there and was met by both him and dad with the wristband + pass. Parked up and this was the view.



Shortly after unpacking tools, jacks and so on, him and I went to the briefing while dad prepared the car, warmed it up and did pressures to start free practice. Briefing was relatively uneventful with 35+ drivers split in 2 races and 4 categories. My guy's on the slowest one but time will bring powerful cars.



FP1 was pretty uneventful. Somewhat slow for him as he could only get 2 clean laps out of the 20 minutes. Laptimes for his class is around 2:18-2:19 and the other class runs around 2:05-2:10 (think BMW E36+Citroen Saxo kind of class), so not a good session but not particularly bad either. Pace was there so we focused on getting his mind off of what could happen and into what was actually going to happen based on his previous runs in here.

Qualifying came after and it was a learning experience. Traffic wise it's always hard as you can't really find a gap easily and you're blue flagged quite a bit to make way for the other class. He got a decent amount of clean laps on the 20 minute run, but he was being followed by the guy above on the classification who was getting the slipstream. He didn't back off and let him through and once he did, that guy played him well and just dropped to 0.5-0.6 seconds slower than my friend's times, so he didn't get a clean last lap until the very finish. P7 out of 11.

After debriefing it all and talking through what happened grid came. We checked times and sectors before sending him off and told him he could easily find almost a whole second so that's the mindset I wanted him in.







Race went well. He got P6 in the end and got to work with being followed pretty closely for the whole race. Guy who did him dirty on qualy got crashed into slightly (cosmetic damage only but quite a lot of it and orange+black flag for repairs) and was out of the race, so karma, maybe?

Overall it was a very good experience for him. Learnt a lot and had his fun so very positive. I love being around the family as well, very kind and down to earth people unlike most of the ones who take part in these championships. I had a blast of a day and he was happy I was able to make it, so overall, very very happy with the day. Special moments honestly.



Race 2 I couldn't watch as I had to leave for an endurance race I signed up in with the rentals. More on that when pictures are posted.

[CDMC]

probably easiest way to locate you, is just check the race tracks lol racing of just spectating, pretty awesome actually

i bet that Toyota is fun as hell to drive

[Plane And Simple]

probably easiest way to locate you, is just check the race tracks lol racing of just spectating, pretty awesome actually

i bet that Toyota is fun as hell to drive

100%. I try to join in on as many trackside things as I can lol