Neuromonitoring Technologies endurance kart team fought hard to end up in fourth place after 6 hours of driving. This was the first endurance race for the team members and we were unable to practice before the race start due to a rain out on Friday. Before the green flag fell on the start of the race, there was a 40 minute qualification run whereby we shuffled all five drivers through the order. We qualified 19th out of 21 teams. This didn’t worry us since the race was going to last for 6 hours. The first driver out of the gate was Grant Cain. At the end of his twenty minute stint he moved all the way up to 9th place. Next up was Noel Mathabel who was in his first official outdoor race. By the time Noel had jumped into the kart, the track was soaking wet from the drizzle. This is no easy driving task since the racing slicks were not replaced by rain tires. Noel drove like an expert learning how to make a kart turn using the brakes with virtually no steering since the front slicks acted as if you were driving a car on ice. The driving order then went to Rich, TG and then I. By the time my stint was over we were back driving a dry track. Somewhere throughout the day Grant set the second fastest lap time for the day. Later, Noel took a trip through the grass when the front spindle decided to fly off at 50 miles per hour. There was never a dull moment. The rest of the race went like clock work and the pit strategy worked out perfect. However the real excitement came at the end of the race when Grant handed over driving duties to Noel. Within twenty minutes of the finish Noel caught the third place team. For about ten minutes he was glued to the bumper of the third place kart when out of nowhere the driver made an error that Noel jumped on. Before the third place team could realize what had happened, Noel was now in third. This went on with the now fourth place team glued to Noel’s bumper. Within 5 minutes of the end, the fourth place team managed to squeeze by and we were now in fourth. Lapped traffic interfered with Noels attempts to capture a podium finish and we got a respectable fourth place only seconds away from third.

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The Beaverun sprint series is underway with the first race of the season behind us. Moving up this season from the Yamaha Jr Sportsman to the Yamaha Super Can class had us wondering how the season opener would pan out. The weekend started with wet weather on the Saturday practice day. It dried enough to get in several sessions of practice late in the evening. Our fastest lap was a minute six seconds and change. This was a good start but we know we need to get into the one minute flat time frame on this course.

Sunday morning we were allowed three practice sessions before qualifying. By the third session Grant had gotten his time down to 1:03:343. This was the fastest lap set for his practice group. Feeling good, we are set for qualifying. When the qualifying laps were completed we had slowed a bit and our fastest lap was only 1:03:796 placing Grant in the number 4 spot for the heat race.

The heat race gave Grant a bit of trouble when he stalled going to the green flag. The flagman gave the “one more lap” signal to the group. By the time he got powered up and caught the pack, the green flag was being thrown. This effectively started him in the rear of the pack. The problems continued as Grant caught slower traffic in turn one. As Grant charged hard into turn one he had to lift to avoid the back of slower traffic. He was unable to get back on the gas soon enough and the motor stalled. Grant had to watch the rest of the heat race from the fences. This set us up to start from dead last in the feature.

When the green flag fell on the feature, Grant charged hard but was careful about slow traffic in turn one. When they came around to the straight away Grant had passed the first two karts and was closing the gap on the next competitor. The next several karts had opened a gap and Grant had to work hard to catch them. Grant caught up to two karts that were being held up by a slower adult driver in a Yamaha Pipe class kart. Within two laps he had passed the two karts and was directly behind the adult. He now has made his way to 5^th position. The adult driver was slow everywhere except the straight away making a pass very difficult. While attempting a pass on the adult driver, the kart Grant had just overtaken slipped in to take the 5^th spot away. The race finished with Grant taking 6^th place. Not a bad finish considering we started in last and had a lot of passing in a ten lap race to make up ground.

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