Friday, September 9 2011
It was a lovely overcast September evening. It looked like there was rain on the horizon. The combatants were wondering whether they would be riding on wet tyres or slicks – in the end they were on slicks as the rain didn’t arrive (and the track is indoor).
Welcome to the Vast Visibility Insurance Endurance trials, at the local go-karting centre. The track is no Silverstone and the staff may not be overly concerned with providing the best racing experience but what the hell – it’s go karts and that’s all that matters. This session was intended to give all of the crew a practice for the 2011 Insurance Endurance event in Milton Keynes, however an incident involving the office pet and a very busy road meant that we had already lost two attendees before leaving the office.
The Vast crew had prepared for this all day by working in the office like normal. This had not prevented a lot of pre-practice banter where several staff members had forgotten that they were practicing for a team event, not to race each other! So here we go… Arrive, wait a bit, put a smelly helmet on, no gloves, no overalls, safety briefing: “Do you know what you’re doin’?” – “Erm, yes?” and off we go.
At this point not one of the Vast team knew what the hell was going on. Was this a warm up? Can we overtake? Are these laps being recorded for qualifying? Is that a unicorn at the vending machine? Once Mike has stopped taking hallucinogenic drugs he realised that it was not a unicorn, but only a regular horse. The karting continued…
We were later told that the first “session” was a practice, the second was for qualifying, which was followed by the final race. Great times!
On the subject of “great times” the fastest lap was shockingly recorded by karting junior Neil Hodgson who made use of his new-found marathoning light weight to breeze around the track half a second faster than his closest rival. Neil’s lack of consistency was his downfall as he finished in third place behind John Pearson and Russell Davis.
While all this was happening the rest of the pack was learning to Go-Kart. Mike “Newbie” Szabo had an excellent lapping time, but did not know how to overtake so he got stuck behind Jess “Princess Peach” Scallion who as all Mario Kart lovers know has a great acceleration but low top speed (plus she shrinks people with magic mushrooms – see above for Mike’s unicorn vision). Donkey “Carl Jackson” Kong was dismayed at the lack of power or his “bad kart” and the fact he had forgotten his banana peels. Geoffrey “Schumacher” Bibby was blocking like the Schumacher of old but racing like the Shumacher of 2011 and failed to live up to expectation! Stefan and Madalina were on the wrong side of the track, as is the custom in mainland Europe.
No Lester Short on the podium I hear you ask? Well, soon in to the final, Lester attempted a classic fairground dodgem maneuver in an attempt to prevent John Pearson from steaming ahead of the pack. This backfired as Mr Short was black-flagged, his kart broke and he finished below last place (is that even possible? Lester found a way.)
