Every fall my company has an annual charity drive which has been accompanied by side events such as a charity golf tournament or remote control car races. This year the activities expanded beyond the traditional golf outing to include such events as bowling… but more importantly … a go-kart endurance race! There are various charities that are part of the annual drive, but this particular event was supporting the United Way of Greater Houston.
Leading up to the event
When the email first came across my inbox (a couple months ago), I was immediately intrigued. The details were extremely vague, and the best I got from it was it’s a 5-person team enduro… how long of a race?…no idea. I didn’t sign up immediately, but instead went about my day-to-day. Knowing my hobby is Motorsports, a friend pinged me to see if I’d be interested in setting up a team. My response: “I suppose… I could be easily persuaded.”
Fast forward several weeks, I got another team invite from a gentleman I met a few years back at a training seminar (he actually introduced me to a local NASA racer that I met up with at a few HPDEs). Per his note to me: “I remember clearly that you race cars, so you would be a ringer.” Before committing to that team, I circled back with my friend to see if they found any additional bodies to form a team, but unfortunately work commitments came up and they were no longer going to be able to participate.
Okay, next! The second team prospect ended up falling through as well at the 11th hour (on the last day of registration – which was the Friday I arrived at the Fall Finale at VIR). I hemmed and hawed to myself while sitting paddock side waiting for the GTM crew to be let in to the ACNA event. I knew full well you could sign up as an individual, the event description said you would just be randomly paired with another group. So, at the absolute 11th hour — post-Oak Tree Tavern dinner — I signed up for the enduro!
Two days before the event a roster was sent out with all the teams. I found my name, but didn’t recognize the names of any of my team mates. Time to meet new people!
On the day of the event, the weather decided to keep theme with VIR – cold, cold, cold. The Houston area actually had a bit of a cold snap in the days leading up to the event. Overnight temperatures dropped to 32 degrees, and the daytime high was only going to hit 45 at best, for about 5 min, while the sun remained hidden behind clouds. Yay… outdoor karting in the cold! Amusingly, the event start time was actually pushed by about 45 minutes due to the cold weather. (Side note: yes.. many Northerners may not consider these temperatures to be “that cold,”, but trust me… this is definitely considered cold for Houstonians!)
Day of the event
Coming straight off VIR weekend and still remembering how cold it was while cocooned in a metal shell, I donned my cold gear base layers before heading out the door. Upon arriving, I checked in and quickly noticed the facility was setup for the festivity with lunch and decorations.
Two gentleman even got into the spirit of things, donning Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton Jr outfits from Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby! Shake and bake!
Despite only arriving a little before the Heat 2 designated start time, I was still early enough to catch the Heat 1 briefing on how the event would be run. All the entrants had been divided into 2 heats with about 12 teams per heat and each team had a maximum of 5 people. The heat would last 45 minutes and it was up to the individual team to decide how long each member drove as long as 4 pit stops were completed. In other words 4 people could have each done 1 lap, and the 5th person driven the whole session. Being early, there was still time to watch most of Heat 1 before it was time to brief Heat 2. I still hadn’t found my team yet, but had looked the gentlemen up in my work Outlook directory and lucked out that 2 of them had a picture in their profile. I wandered around the room until I found some similar looking gentlemen and introduced myself. Right on the first try! We all quickly came to find out that man #5 was a no show, so we were down to a 4-person team. Not so bad really, just meant we’d have 1 awkward pit stop.
After the formalities of Hi, My name is… and nice to meet you, the next question was have you done this before? I was the only person with prior karting experience (ohh, this is gonna be fun), but 2 of the 3 other gentleman did have some limited HPDE experience (okay, at least there’s that!) I decided to sit back and let everyone else decide our lineup/pit strategy/etc, as I wasn’t necessarily feeling too optimistic about the overall outcome. In the end the method we chose was very scientific… and went from largest to smallest person, HA!, which meant I was last to drive.
The race!
Despite having only 4 of 5 team members, we were still going to be required to execute 4 pit stops. The strategy we chose was that the first driver out would immediately pit in after completing 1 lap. Initially I thought this was going to be very strange, I mean on the one hand who cares.. it has to be done at some point. First lap proved not to be an entirely bad idea, given everyone else was still getting used to the track and spinning out on lap 2, which meant even though we immediately lost several lap positions it probably wasn’t as bad as it could have been in the middle of a hot session. Driver 1 (who didn’t have any racing experience) did fairly decently, with a best time of 47.764. Mind you faster times were in the 45.xxx seconds. He had a few spin outs but recovered quickly and even moved up several positions in overall laps.
Laps for drivers 2 and 3 were pretty uneventful and best times for those drivers were 48.664 and 48.873, respectively. As I headed into my stint, the fastest lap time to beat was a 45.5xx. But we weren’t racing for lap times, instead, number of laps… and we were, I believe, still 2 or 3 laps down from the leader. #sadpanda
Needless to say, I wasn’t too worried about it… in the sense of: well, it’ll be what it is, I’m just gonna go have fun. #sendit. Not until after the race, when I read the time sheet for the first time did I find out I came out of the gate with a first lap 1.45 seconds faster than my next fastest teammate!
Given the limited time I had to make a run for it, my number one priority was to immediately focus and understand the lap as quick as possible. It didn’t take long to figure out where the #mustdriveflatout parts were and were the lift parts were. I was actually able to use my HPDE experience to compare some of the turns on this track to ones I knew overly well, like the double apexes of “Old Ram” and “the Hook” at Shenandoah Circuit. Ignoring the first part of the turn set you up perfectly for the 2nd apex. #nailedit
I straightened out the esses by flying across the curbing. And the hairpin was really the only corner to lift, or jab the brakes to help rotate the kart. I was flying through the session, passing folks inside, outside, basically anywhere I could find space. I even dive bombed somebody – unintentionally – you might question me after replaying the video.
But from the driver’s perspective it seemed like he was fading out and I could grab the inside line if grip would hold. #fullsend
The checkered flag finally dropped, and I eased off the throttle through my last lap. I pulled into the pit and was a bit surprised that I was the first kart coming in! Well, maybe this is a good sign! I stepped out of the kart to people clapping and cheering for me as I walked across pit lane. My teammates were saying “you won!” adrenaline still high from the session, I was a little confused. Won? Really? I looked up at the electronic scoreboard, and darn if it wasn’t true. I recovered the lost laps for the team and came in with a best lap that was 1.8 seconds faster than the next team! My final lap for the day was a 45.359, the second fastest lap time of either session. A racer in Heat 1 bested me by 0.7 seconds, moving me to 2nd place overall between the two heats. Not too shabby if I do say so myself!
In the end, I’m really glad I went. It was great to get back in a kart again, and it was a nice way to chase the VIR weekend, but more importantly it was Motorsports for a good cause!
Post script:
Here’s how the final leaderboard panned out:
Wait, wait, wait… back that go-kart up! You said you came in 2nd overall, but you got crushed by 5 seconds by that time of 40.343 seconds!! And so it would seem, but not all is as it seems. I SADLY missed what happened, but was informed by eye witness account, that the kart driver who placed that time…well… let’s just say #vikingline. Apparently it saves 5 seconds!
Viking line is best line.