South West Kart Club – Cobden – 18/2/2018

Wow – It has been a while since we have put together an update, and that’s because a lot has been going on.

I’ve spent some time cleaning up Jimmy’s website, as some wonderful person decided it would be a good idea to force visitors to the site to mine crypto currency in the browsers.  Suffice to say, this impacted the performance of the site somewhat, and made it difficult for people to read any posts.

On top of this, Jim hasn’t been doing a lot of karting over the new year, as he managed to fracture his ankle performing some sort of gnarly stunt on his scooter.  A week ago the doctor finally said it was OK to remove the moonboot, so it was straight to the track for some practice.

We decided it would be a good idea to get some race practice in before round 1 of the national series next weekend, so we went for a short 7 hour drive to Cobden in Victoria over the weekend to compete in round 1 of the Victorian Country Series.

We thought there might be a decent sized field (eg 15 to 20 kids) when we entered, but we ended up with a full field of 36.

We had a few practice sessions on Saturday to learn the track and try and figure out some sort of setup.  Jim was struggling for pace, and needed to find a fair bit of time if he wanted to challenge the leaders.

We had a good hard think about everything on Saturday night (well, I had a few beers and maybe 1 or 2 glasses of wine), and made some changes for Qualifying on Sunday morning.  Somehow, this worked and Jim qualified in 3rd.

The start of heat 1 was frantic, and Jim was knocked back to 5th.  He made a move for 4th in the middle of the race, but was overtaken again straight away.  On the last lap, he managed to get into 4th, before making a move on the last corner and finishing in 3rd.

Some changes were made to the kart for Heat 2, and again Jim was shuffled backwards by some contact in turn 1 at the start.  The kart seemed to have a bit more pace this time though, and Jim worked his way up to 3rd.  He didn’t have the pace of the leaders though, and ended up finishing in that spot.

Jim started the final from 3rd, and he got a really good start to be leading after the first lap.  He held on for a few laps, but was taken in Lap 3.  The 2 boys pulled away from the rest of the field, but Jim didn’t quite have the pace to challenge for the lead, finishing in 2nd.

In the end, we benefited a great deal from this excursion.  Jim’s back and firing after injuring his ankle, and we learned a heap about setting up the kart to deal with the conditions we faced over the weekend.

Jim would like to thank Iocane, WIFA Racing, EvoKart Australia, Haak Engines, and his mum and sister for all their support.  Thanks also to all the officials and volunteers, without whom Jim couldn’t race.

I can happily report that there were no issues with Christine over the weekend.  I came away (relatively) injury free so things are looking good.

The current score:

JP -> 3 (Survived 2 weeks without hurting himself, use of Angle Grinder Persuasion, Ancient Spirit Mumbo Jumbo)

Christine -> 8 (Burn by exhaust, Degreasing of the eye, Magical Goggle Piercing Metal bit, Special Combo, Epidermal Peel, Degrease, Rinse, Repeat, 98 Octane Eye Wash, Inappropriate Tool Grabbing).