 |
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
Site last updated: |
|||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
 |
||
|
22/12/00 18/10/00 The final round of Challenge 2000 was held at Daytona International on Sunday 15th October. Despite drawing a kart with decidedly dodgy handling and therefore having a poor race finish, the Trisys team comprising Bram, Kam, and Louis managed to do enough to take 2nd place overall in the championship. I think that the trophy will take pride of place in the Trisys offices in Luton. On 16th October the final ANKC race of the season took place at Whilton Mill in the rain. The club will not be running a winter series this year as most of you are such a bunch of wimps that you won't even race indoors during the winter. However, those of you who are keen should keep in touch as we do have a hard core of enthusiasts who enter open races throughout the year, sometimes as individuals and sometimes in teams. 28/9/00 The rerun of the club's first race to be held on the new circuit at Whilton Mill went off a lot more smoothly than the first attempt did. There are still some problems with the race software they use, but with a bit of massaging at least they were able to extract the correct results from it this time. There is also general agreement that the karts are set up for a driver much larger than the average person and are therefore quite painful to drive. The seats need to be brought forward quite a bit, and the throttle pedals could do with being offset or angled to the right. Let's hope that they react positively to the feedback, which we have provided. 15/10/00 The final round of Challenge 2000 is due to take place at Daytona International on 15th October. 3 of the competing teams include club members. The race should start around 10:00, and will last for 3 hours. 4/9/00 On Bank Holiday weekend a few club members took part in a 6-hour Club 100 2-stroke race at Lydd International Raceway. We were lucky with the weather and had a terrific time. Next year the Corporate Challenge series, which club members have been competing in for the last 4 years, will be teaming up with Club 100 in a switch from Thunderkarts to 2-strokes. This is not to be missed if you like speed. I prefer driving a Club 100 2-stroke hire-kart even above a well set up privateer Prokart. More details coming soon. 3 club members took part in a 3-hour Prokart race at Sandown Park. The event was organised for the Jaguar Enthusiasts Club, and run by John Burton and Playscape. This was another good day out, and we didn't get too wet. Our team won by almost 2 laps from a field of 25 including a few teams from the Challenge series. The organiser plans to run a small series of about 4 races next year. This might be a good series for those who can't afford to do the Challenge. The final race in the ANKC 2000 Championship is due to take place on 4th October. Don't miss it! 24/8/00 Some of us have now tried out the new National circuit and Thunderkart fleet at Whilton Mill. It's a great circuit built on a gentle slope, with some fast flowing sections, safe run-offs in case you get a bend wrong, and some good overtaking opportunities. However, they do need to get their act sorted out a bit as far as the organisation and timing of events is concerned. We have had one exclusive event for which they were unable to provide sufficient karts despite the fact that we had less than 20 drivers, which at one time they were planning to make the minimum booking! We also entered 2 teams in an open event for which we were asked to register at 17:30 so that an early start could be made due to the lack of lighting, but which did not get underway until 19:35. At both of these events they had problems with either the operation of their timing computer, or the software in use. The results produced for our exclusive event were wrong, and the open event was abandoned due to the timing equipment not actually being started, but we would have run out of light anyway. Still I'm sure they well get themselves sorted out, and floodlighting is due to be erected next week, so I am looking forward to trying another race there sometime. Hopefully, this one will get underway and be completed promptly with the correct timings and results produced at the end. Just in case anyone from Whilton Mill reads this, as I know you visit this site occasionally, here is an easy way for your race directors to save some time. With large fields, you would save a lot of time when forming the grid if you put the drivers into the karts and then directed them to the grid, rather than having a few of the marshals shuffling the karts around. 17/7/00 3 teams associated with the club have just returned from a very enjoyable weekend at Raceland, Gladsmuir, just outside Edinburgh, where we took part in the 4th annual Diamond 24-Hour Prokart Race. Just the day before we travelled north the weather forecast turned from wet to dry, and the race was held in perfect weather. All 3 teams returned with something to show for their efforts. The Abbey National and Trisys teams got trophies for taking 3rd and 4th places in the Hire-kart class, and Sugar & Spice were rewarded with a free entry to next year's race for their efforts over the past 2 years in putting together and completing these races with that rare animal, an all female team. 4/7/00 Congratulations to team Rapid Racing (Jody Stanton, Jonathan Feakin, Mike Gruner) on their success with their Prokart in the latest round of the Daytona Summer Championships. They took their first ever podium place by finishing first in class, and 5th overall, an excellent result. 14/5/00 Ever since the first year (1997) we entered an Abbey National team in the Corporate Karting Challenge Championship, there have been a number of teams with ANKC members in them taking part each year. Despite finishing an occasional race on the podium, or even winning the odd race, none of the teams containing our club members have figured very highly in the overall championship. Hopefully, this will be the year that changes. After the first 3 rounds the Trisys team, whose main drivers are Louis Lazarus, Kam Ho, and Bram de Groot, sometimes assisted by Richard Jackson and Richard Morris, are leading the table with one 2nd place and two 1st places. Fingers crossed! 4/5/00 All 3 teams associated with the club who entered for the Raceland 24-Hour Race last year have once again entered this year. They are Trisys, ANKC, and Sugar & Spice. Both of these last 2 teams are still seeking additional drivers. Contact Stuart Shearman if you are interested, but be aware that you should be female if you wish to drive for Sugar & Spice. [I bet that the female club members wouldn't allow the males to get away with discrimination on grounds of gender! :) ] 7/4/00 The ANKC racing season has got off to a great start with what was possibly the most successful event we have ever held at Daytona International. See the race report for details. I recommend that Club members who missed out make sure that they do not repeat their mistake next time. 9/3/00 GP Karting in Northampton ran a special open solo endurance event to assess the viability of increasing the number of karts they run at once from 10 to 15. Several club members were invited to enter the event and 3 of us managed to get in. They seem to like the format we requested them to use for our club events held there. They adopted it for this event and have apparently also used it with other private groups. In case you are not familiar with the format, this is how it works. The karts are allocated at random and there is a practice/qualifying session to decide the starting grid for the first race. At the end of the first race the karts are gridded up for the second race in their finishing order, but the drivers swap karts and line up in reverse grid order. So whoever finished first starts the second race at the back of the grid in the kart which finished last and vice versa, and so on all the way through the field. 12/3/00 There was a Challenge 2000 practice day at Bayford Meadows. Although there is no Abbey National team in the Challenge this year several club members are taking part in the series, but driving for other companies. 4 club members took part in the practice session and had a great time playing on a terrific track with full race tuned Thunderkarts chassis and engines. It was actually an open practice day at the circuit and there were a number of Prokarts, 100cc 2-strokes, and Ecomotos circulating on the track during the day. The Ecomoto (250cc water-cooled 4-stroke producing 30bhp) looks fun… faster than a Thunderkart or a 100cc 2-stroke. I'll have to try and get a test drive in one and let you know what it feels like :). The actual Challenge race series commences this Saturday 18th March. 26/1/2000 The ANKC AGM was held in the staff restaurant at Shenley Wood. The chairman stood down due to forthcoming early retirement and Ray Trapnell was chosen to take his place, Bill Bryant was welcomed onto the committee and will be taking on the role of membership secretary. The other 3 committee members all agreed to continue in their current roles for another year. 20/2/2000 The club team took part in the final round of the Daytona Thunderkart Winter Series in perfect weather conditions. We fared much better against the top teams than we had during the previous rounds and managed to achieve a few laps at the sort of pace which we had hoped to set from the outset, i.e. 1:05.50. This may have been due to the fact that we acquired some set-up information from another team and got our kart prepared accordingly, although like many teams we were still struggling with grip on the day. Daytona International was busy doing some work on the track during January. These works are now complete and I think that you will like the results. The curbs have been modified, the run-off areas increased and tarmaced over, 1 or 2 bends have been slightly re-profiled, and the drainage has been improved. The result is a safer and possibly faster track, which should drain better and be less prone to getting muddy when people re-enter the track after going off. The new curbs will discourage people from taking short cuts, but when combined with the new run-offs should result in less kart damage when people overcook it slightly. In March they will be taking delivery of a new fleet of Corporate Thunderkarts to replace the existing fleet of pro-karts. Whilton Mill has also been busy during the winter and they have constructed a new larger circuit alongside the existing one. They will shortly be taking delivery of 2 new kart fleets. Single 200-cc karts for use on the old smaller circuit and Corporate Thunderkarts for use on the new larger circuit. We have booked our races for the ANKC 2000 Championship at Daytona International. As last year we also plan to hold races elsewhere, but have not yet arranged anything. 7/1/2000 Five club members took part in a 24-hour indoor race organised by Raceland at the Royal Highland Centre, Ingliston, near Edinburgh. The team, WYSIWYG, consisted of Bob and Sally Hillier and their son Glen, Kam Ho, and Stuart Shearman. It was a tough event as we were using prokarts on a tight twisty indoor circuit. The speeds reached meant that the g-forces affected the drivers quite a bit, and most teams ended up doing driver stints much shorter than the maximum permitted 60 minutes. With 24 karts in the race the 400-metre track was a bit crowded and the track marshals had to work very hard at keeping the circuit in shape when karts kept bashing the tyre walls out of position. Needless to say, there was a lot of kart damage, although only 1 team actually retired. 10 privately owned karts and 14 hire karts took part in the race and the club team put in an outstanding performance to take 2nd place in the hire category and 4th place overall. This was a very satisfying result although we were all extremely tired at the end, and if they run the event again we will want to enter a team of at least twice the size. 1/1/2000 Throughout January there will be works taking place on the track at Daytona International. They are re-profiling just about every bend, improving sight lines and run-off areas, installing different kerbing, and putting down red-track surfacing (which is not apparently actually red). This should lead to safer, less interrupted racing, and will mean that there are new lap records waiting to be set. |
||
|
|
|
[Home] [Club News] [History 2006] [History 2005] [History 2004] [History 2003] [History 2001-2] [History 2000] [History 1999] [History 1998] [History 1996-7] [caxtonfsc] [diamond] [bb-cr] [bb-ss] [bb-res] [c97r4] [c97r6] [Park Royal] [Fastrack] |