I went Go-Karting…

Yesterday (Saturday 13th), I went go karting with the people from work. Last year, we went to the indoor track in Harlow (my home town), but this time it was decided that we wanted to try something a little bit different and so we booked up to go to the outdoor track in Milton Keynes… it’s not too far of a drive from where everyone at work lives and conveniently my boss who lives in the same town as me offered to give me a lift.

The weather forecast for Saturday was nice and clear with high temperatures… which seemed like the perfect weather for go-karting on an outdoor track.

Along the way, torrential rainfall started to fall all of a sudden… not so good. Thankfully by the time we arrived at the track itself, the rain had stopped falling, but it had already soaked the track.

Once inside, we scoped out the map of the track and geared up in fetching race attire:

We got a simple safety briefing and were then led out onto the track to get in our karts and drive for 25 minutes. Of course, things didn’t run smoothly for me here. I was initially given Kart 24, but as I approached it, the kart started to run away without me. The guy showing me to my kart grabbed it and killed the engine. I was moved to Kart 17, which wasn’t currently running so the guy revved up the engine before instructing me to sit down. As people started to pull out onto the track, I squeezed the accelerator and the engine cut out. The guy started the engine back up again and then told me to wait for a gap in the line up before pulling out onto the track. Squeezing the accelerator again… the engine cut out again…

I was then moved to my third kart and made my way out onto the track, which was wet and slippery and not greatly aided by the slick tyres on the karts which have little to no grip… what followed was a masterclass in karting. Not by me, of course, but led by the three people on the track that were former karters themselves, who got the top three spots on the podium. What I did around the track… well… it would be classed somewhere around the Sunday Driving level of driving.

I came 16th. Out of 16.

I only span out twice, and neither of them was serious enough to need assistance from the race overseers, so I think that is a bonus. One of the other drivers had a go-pro so I am wondering if he managed to get any decent footage from it, he was slightly worried that he would have gotten 25 minutes of the steering wheel of the kart.

The biggest thing I noticed afterwards, upon returning home and getting in my own car again… Power Steering is a god send. The steering wheel of my car was so much lighter, spinning easily and turning the car with relative ease. Oh… and we all got these lovely time cards, showing us our best times: