First career race and I got a podium?

First of all thank you guys so much for the good luck wishes they mean a lot! Alrighty let's start with practice 1 shall we? Well it's important to note that yesterday there was a nice cold front that went through Florida and had rained all day long and into the night. Today, no rain but over cast so there was still PLENTY of water all over the track. Now Because of such few numbers they had to mix a whole bunch of classes with the one I was in (TaG Sr.) So we had Rotax, Shifters, DD2, KF2 and TaG all in one race. So for practice 1 there were only 3 karts that took to the track, myself, a shifter and a fellow TaG competitor. So wet track + slicks + a 125cc Easykart engine that rev's at 19,000 RPM = you guessed it, spins! However only 3 in the session that for me lasted 5 laps. best lap time of the session 1:25.854.

Practice 2, this time with the full field of karts (16) busy track plus wet and drying conditions..... still on slicks. This time for the first few laps I had all the grip I needed and didn't spin once. With high tire pressures (as they say to use if the track is wet, we were at 15PSI at the front 16 in the rear) comes a smaller contact patch and also comes higher tire temp for the contact patch. so once the tires got to temp I spent more time backwards than I did foward, mostly in part of the rogue wet spots that would pop up what seemed like no where, so one second I had grip the next I didn't. If you could see how violent the kart was snapping around on me, I'm sure you would agree I put a whole new definition to the term "snap overstear". Best lap time of the session 1:17.376

Me on the grid for qualifying (note: No sponsor stickers on the kart yet, decal shop was slacking and didn't have them ready for me when they said they were going to.)

Qualy, So to fix the snap overstear issue we droped the tire PSI to 12 in the front and 13 in the rear and also moved the rear tires in on both sides by 5mm and god did this help! From here on in for the rest of the day I didn't spin once. So we had 5 laps to qualify, all of my laps were very clean but could have been better. The track was still damp in parts so still wasn't getting maximum grip. Highlight of the session was the fellow TaG driver ahead of me, most of the curbs at OKC (Orlando Kart Center) are 6-8 inches tall which is amazingly tall (even for cars). So the person in front of me went into the corner a bit to hot and had no choice but to go straight, right over one of these huge outside curbs, from my point of view he jumped up to eye level which is about.... I'll say a foot and a half. Other than that was a smooth session for me. Fastest lap time of session 1:02.276 Result 15th (4th in TaG sr.) of 16.

Cool down lap of qualy.

Heat 1, alright so here it is my first race with the kart a nice quick 6 lap heat race to start setting our grid for the final. sSo nerves were at ease for this one for my biggest fear was to have someone behind me at the start and just push me into the curved front stretch and spin me out, fortunatly didn't have to worry about it. So right away at the start the ego's got the best of the front row with the pole sitter (female shifter kart racer who was amazingly fun to watch drive) and 2nd place (also a shifter) comming together to create a nice turn one pile up. So I took the advice given to me by fellow TORA competitor and teammate Jesse Grose (Silencer s6) to take it easy at the start and to not get up in the mix. About 5 karts came together there at the start and I avoided the skermish quite well and even passed another driver after the accident just one corner later that was 20 feet later. thus putting me to ninth overall and 2nd in class!

Check it out beginer beating all the regulars after their goof at turn 1. (man on right is Andre, he's the track owner and the sole TonyKart dealer in America in fact runs the TonyKart USA factory team which Michael Schumacher ran with at the 2009 Super Nats in Las Vegas, also great friends with Barichello).

Now we're past the incident running well and having a whole lot of fun, got passed by the KF2 kart so that put us in 10th but I'm getting into a rythm finally, after all it was the first real dry run of the day, learning the kart and the lines as well. Well little did I know I was in a huge battle with a competitor in Rotax Sr. for the whole race and I had no idea he was behind me until with about 2 laps to go he gave me a light nudge comming out of a corner. I wondered if it was me getting lose or if it was someone behind me so I look back and there he was, as I looked back he pointed foward more or less telling me "I'm not gonna pass you like that keep going." So we race hard passing eachother back and forth for the last 2 laps I beat him to the line for the heat race and I was pumped! And who wouldn't be if you were a beginer and you were racing a verteran of kart racing clean and hard and end up beating them! Well we're all lined up waiting our turn to go accross the scales, me and the guy I was having an awsome battle with shook hands, had a laugh and talked a bit about our race with eachother, I look at his kart he was still on rains and was keeping right up with me, so that was slightly disapointing but I was having so much fun it didn't really matter to me in the long run. Fastest lap time of the session 57.931 2nd in TaG Sr. 9th overall.

Me and the Rotax Sr. competitor both of us pitching it sideways through the corner.

Heat 2, shortened this one up by 2 laps so we had a nice "dash for cash" if you will. This one was not so great for me, didn't get turned around at turn 1 fortunatly even with my 10th place grid position, but at turn 4, the hairpin after the long straightaway, i had to make a serious and quick decision, for the competitors ahead had all breaked early for the corner and i had a clear outside line so i figured i would get at least 1 or 2 on the other side of the corner. Turns out one of the Rotax guys poped to the outside to put a move on his teammate and there I was closing in fast to his rear bumper. My options were to either run into him and possibly ramp over him right into the barrier or take an evasive move to the extreme outside to avoid contact and I had about a half second to process this (thank god for TORA where we practice this all the time) so I obviously took the latter of the two because I didn't want the risk of tearing up my stuff before the main race. After all this happened I found myself at the back in 15th and 3rd in class.

YEAH!!!!!!!!

Now comes the interesting part because it's also my first crash, a couple of laps later after the Turn 4 issue going into Turn 7, I had a very nice surprise for the guy behind me from miles behind decided to try a dive bomb or all dive bombs! It didn't turn out well for either of us for he locked up the rear end and ended up spining it around where his left side met my left side as I was turning into the corner and I had no choice but to get on the brakes as hard as I could and pray like hell we wouldn't hit the barrier comming up to hard, fortunatly for both of us this was not the case, we did hit the barrier and he did manage to come out of it better for he just had to pull foward, I on the other hand had to wait for a corner worker to push me backwards before I could go, sooooo I'm now 16th of 16 and 4th in class, GREAAAAAAAT!!!! So that's where I finished and to be honest I'm glad that one did becuase I got hosed badly! Fastest lap time 58.231.

Just making due.

The Final 12 Laps, well this of all was actually the most uneventfull, I did pick off a few karts at the start and got into a nice battle with another person and god was it awsome! I passed him on lap 3 I pushed the kart for all I could get out of it! But it was this early push that cost me in the end because I burned myself out early and had nothing at the end, in fact I was burned out so much I got passed by the two that were chasing me. I thought I could get one back before the end of the race but with 3 laps left the Shifter's came comming, one went right by easliy the other had to slot in right between myself and the guy I was trying to catch, the gap became to big and I wasn't able to make it back up from being so worn out so I finished 3rd in class 12th overall. Now this is where the crazy stuff happens. One of the competitors in my class turned out to be 40 lbs under weight, thus was DQ'd so now I'm 2nd in class GREAT! BUT, the one lone KF2, he was the only one in his class and for the final they decided to classify him in TaG which then put me back into 3rd for my class, I don't think it's right for that to happen but there was nothing I could do to change what was already done (couldn't protest because this decision was made a half hour after the race, which a half hour after the race is the deadline to file a protest, so I was stuck with 3rd. The good news though was that the KF2 was 2nd for 3rd overall (beating the DD2's and the Rotax's) was 1st in TaG, just 3 seconds behind the shifters Shocked

. So for my first race I walked away with a podium and a nice piece of hard.... well glass ware through the misfortune of 1 competitor and the fortune of another. Fastest lap time of the race 56.481 (that's a 30 second improvement from my first session granted that one was wet!)

That's the checkered flag for this blog, I'm tired, need a shower and want to go to sleep so cheers gents I'll see you on track in the virtual world!

Louis Satterlee, a.k.a. AudiSport Louis

The checkered flag of the Final.

First career race and I got a podium?

First career race and I got a podium?

First career race and I got a podium? :: Comments