Round 1 - Silverstone | Club100 Junior Northern Championship
When we first talked about signing up to a season of Club100, I knew I was going to be competing at some of the best tracks in the UK and they would be a big step up from what I was used to so far. But I never expected that they would soon announce that they were expanding the championship to 7 rounds and that the first race would be at a brand new track at the home of British motorsport, Silverstone.
Arriving at the venue was pretty cool, having never been to Silverstone in any capacity, it was an eye opening experience seeing the scale of everything there. There was a slight catch though, the opening of the track to the public had been delayed, because not everything was finished! So for all the nice shiny new bells and whistles, there were plenty of unfinished elements. Wires hanging out in the pit building, no finish line gantry, and most disappointingly, the cafe which has an amazing looking pizza oven, wasn't ready to serve food yet!
But the main thing is that the track itself was complete, and looking incredible! The amount of grip available, even on a wet morning was amazing, the track is fast, super wide (using elements of the old F1 track!) with plenty of overtaking opportunities, and an amazing 175m long straight if you're using the full grand prix layout. It was a dream to drive!
After a morning track walk, it was time to get ready for practice and my first time driving the track. There had been some heavy rain when we first arrived at the track, but the rain would not return for the rest of the day meaning that with each session, the track got just that little bit drier. But for practice we still had a reasonable amount of water on the track. I had a lot of fun and my first laps were reasonably competitive despite still learning the lines and missing plenty of apexes! 16th in my group, but with lots of opportunity for improvement.
Qualifying was up next and with the track continuing to dry slightly with each session, being in the 2nd group definitely gave a slight advantage. I set a decent lap on my 3rd lap which had me reasonably high in the group (around 10th), unfortunately as others improved, I wasn't able to find more time and ended sliding down to 21st in my group, but 34th overall. Since the top 22 go into the pre-A final, that put me 12th on the grid for the pre-B final, a pretty decent result and one I was really pleased with.
Although I was happy with my qualifying result, it did leave me on the outside for the first corner, which I knew would make it a challenge. This led to me losing a few places at the start, but overall it wasn't too bad, still in the race and looking to make some moves. Unfortunately, disaster was just around the (first corner). At the start of lap 3, there was an incident with a handful of karts in front of me. As I swerved to avoid making contact with the stationery karts, I ended up on the grass And to my annoyance, everyone else managed to turn themselves around and carry on, but I was stuck! By the time I got the kart back on track, I was miles behind, last on track.. I pushed my best to try and catch some of the karts at the back, but then made a mistake trying a little too hard and lost more time. I would remain at the back for the rest of the race, only beating a retired kart. 29th, not the start I wanted to my club100 season, but we learn and move on. There was still another race to come.
Sadly, the result of the first race meant I would start 27th our of 28 for the B final. At least I had nothing to lose and started on the inside for turn 1. I was much more comfortable in this race and managed to gain some places in the first corner. I continued to to gain places, helped by some incidents further up the order as well as some nice overtakes. I continued moving up the order until getting into 13th place, I was having so much fun! At this point, Ella Wroe and Charlie Ledieu caught me after having their own off-track moments earlier in the race, and we had a good battle for a couple of laps. Then as I was in 14th place, another incident happened bringing out a full course yellow which would remain in place until the end of the race. A slightly premature end to what was a really fun race, but I was really pleased with my 14th placed finish.
Despite the on-track lows and highs, the overall experience was incredible and I enjoyed the day so much. I'm really looking forward to Round 2 at Whilton Mill in April where I hope I can continue to improve. Hopefully I get to compete at Kart Silverstone again in the future as it's really an incredible place to drive and a wonderful track.