I started the race weekend with the free practices, learning the track, finding the good setup, getting everything ready. Note that I've never used rain tyres in my whole life before. Ever. I woke up on Saturday morning, opened the windows: Rain. In my head, I said "Crap." We went to the track, and we had to change the setup completely to suit the wet conditions. My coach told me to follow one of the fast guys to learn how they drove as though he could explain how to drive, it's easier to copycat. So that's exactly what I did. And everything went horribly wrong and the guy was gone in 3 corners
I wanted to wait for another quick guy to get past me to follow, but I said "Heck, I got dis". I knew during these 8 minutes I had to push as hard as I could. On the last lap, giving it my all, I surprisingly clocked a 58.239, 2 tenths away from pole, giving me the 4th position in my group, and 7th overall. I was really happy to get this result, as with the level I was racing with (39 countries, 51 drivers), that was really good. (Probably feels better to win a WRS week though
) Since the maximum capacity of the track was 34, we had to split the drivers into groups: A, B, and C. Would you like me to explain the groups? Since you've already read this far (I honestly can't), I am going to do so. The groups will determine the number of heats during the weekend. In this case, there were 3 races: A vs B, A vs C, and B vs C. So 1st is the 1st of group A, 2nd is 1st of group B, 3rd is 1st of group C, and the 4th is the 2nd of group A, and so on...
It may be a little confusing right now, but karts do rolling starts, so the interior always gets the slight advantage. In this case, if you're in group A, and the race is A vs B, if you're for example the 3rd of group A, you'll be on the interior beside the 3rd of group B. Makes more sense now? Ok back to the racing. I was 3rd of group A, so starting 5th in each heat. In heat A - B there was a big crash in turn 1, along with a guy trying to cut the corner by mowing the grass, so I had to run wide, losing 4 places. We had to go slowly for the next 5 laps for everything to settle down, before getting back to racing. As soon as I saw a gap, I went for it, but I only got 2 out of the 4 places lost since the heats are only 9 laps long. In heat 2, I got a good start, keeping my 5th position till lap 2, where I tried to overtake the 4th guy: it was succesful for half a second, before he did a criss-cross, and I dropped back down. Not that serious right? Yes, the 6th till 10th was following us, and since I couldn't slow down to go back to the interior to defend my position, I was stuck in the exterior and got hung out to dry, dropping down to 10th. We were all doing the same lap times, and due to me not having any balls, I stayed there till the end like a donkey. Starting 11th in the prefinal, the 2nd guy had a big problem with the engine, making the whole exterior lane bog down, and before I could even reach turn 1, I was in 5th position. I outbroke the 4th guy, and we had a small battle for the first few laps, allowing the 6th and 7th to catch up. Eventually I managed to get a gap on the 4th guy to run away, but the 6th guy went up to 5th and was closing in every lap. He did an unexpected move, jumping on the apex to be right on the edge of the interior, and there he got past and ran away. I couldn't even put up a fight with him. I ended the prefinal in 5th, which after thinking, was a better place than 4th as that would have put me on the exterior lane. The final. Starting 5th, I had a decent start, I dropped to 6th but regained that place in the next hairpin. I overtook 4th place, and let him eat my dust. For the next 7 to 9 laps, I was closing in to the 3rd place man, really slowly, but surely. Turns out he probably had too low pressures as he started running away after that. Or maybe I had too high pressures. Nah I just was sliding too much. In all cases, I wasn't going the right way, 3rd place was running away from me, and I looked behind: 5th place was sniffing my ass. I tried to make a gap, but with the slipstream it was difficult, as his lap times were quicker than mine. He got past eventually, and 6th place almost got through with him, but I managed to stop him from doing so. On the last lap, the 4th guy slowed down on the exit of the hairpin, causing me to hit him and go a little sideways. It gave the 6th place guy an opportunity to jump me in the interior, and he took it, if he waited another 2 tenths of a second I would have guarded it. Too bad. They defended till the end, and I settled with 6 place. I'd like to thank my coach (which is also my mechanic) for the tips and tricks, my parents for supporting me all this way, my supporters, the CIK-FIA organisation as well as the OTK Group for making the race so well organized.