Geri's first drive of the new kart
16th August:
Geri has been waiting over 2 weeks for this, that's some going when you are only 9 years old. Rye House operate test days on Saturdays for as many hours as are not booked by other groups. A call to Rye House on Friday afternoon confirmed testing was on from 09:00-12:00, 13:00-14:00 and 15:00-16:00. We had no idea how to prepare the kart, but we knew someone who did! Step forward Aiden of Rogue Racing. Once again Aiden overdid the customer service, offering to come and help prepare the kart, he brought along his kart and a couple of the guys so they could have a runout too.
We met up at the circuit at 8:30am, got Geri signed in and started setting up. First off was fuelling up the kart, and putting some oil in the engine. Aiden showed us how to start it, and it ran for the very first time. Geri was under instruction to go out on circuit and run around slowly for a few laps just to bed everything in, to run the engine in gently, to wear off the sheen of the tyres - and to remember which way the track went. Geri has been out at Rye House before, but that was back in January and February, and in their kart, not Geri's. A funny thing happened on Geri's outlap, he got lost! There are two configurations of the track, corporate users use a slightly shorter run missing out one hairpin. That was the track Geri had used in the past, and even though he hadn't been here in 6 months, he knew where the track was supposed to go - only a tyre barrier had been placed across the short cut, he tried to go between the tyres before we pointed out the correct route.
After about a dozen running-in laps, we called Geri in and checked over the kart, checked tyre pressures and stuff. Then we sent him back out with instruction to "get on with it". Early lap times were around the 49 second mark, we had looked up the recent race results here and 42s would be front running. To pass the ARKs test to get his race licence, Geri will need to get within 10% of the mid-point of the grid, so around 46-47 seconds. We pulled Geri in to tell him how he was doing and see how he felt. He was a bit unsure about the first corner from the pits on the far side of the circuit but we sent him back out to have some fun and get more time in the kart.
Bit by bit Geri's confidence in the kart was improving, he was starting to slide it around, and the lap times were getting better. he soon put a string of 47s together, then it was regular 46s, then 45s before one blistering lap of 44.66 (all lap times approximate and taken from stop watch). By lunch time Geri must have had the best part of 40-50 minutes of track time and was looking smooth and comfortable. A couple of kids from that morning's ARKs test had hung around for a bit and now Geri seemed to be faster than them.
A break for lunch was needed by all, then back out in the afternoon. Geri's day culminated with the final hour session for which he stayed out on track for all but about 2 minutes, and that only because he had something in his eye. We expected his performance to tail off as he tired, but he saved the best for last, his final nine laps between two yellow flag incidents were all 44s, his fastest of the day ended at 44.3 seconds. Two more seconds and he would be running at Cadet race pace, and this on his first ever drive of the kart! Its a big file (28Mb), and its rough, but here's some video of Geri at Rye House.
We will try to express Geri's progress and book him for an ARKs test next Saturday. We know he can meet the driving standards, we will be coaching him this week for the written part of the test. All going well, Geri could be racing at Rye House in 3 weeks time.
Next up for Geri is a test day at Whilton Mill on Wednesday. Geri has never even visited the circuit, so when Aiden offered to take his kart over and keep and eye on him, we couldn't turn that down. We had planned for Geri to race there later in the year, so a test session will be invaluable.
