Started POLE ! Came Home 4th...

Luck. How many times have you heard from a racer that his/her
luck ran out during the race?
And how many times you said 'Aiya, cannot win dun blame Luck lah'
I dunno about you, but I had said countless times myself too.

It came back to hunt me on 21 June for our 390cc 2 hour Endurance
race at Premas Jaya. Now, it's my turn to bemoan Bad Luck! SUAY !

Before the main story, let me introduce my team for the race.
Kok Peng, who along with another friend, Desmond, are quite
experienced in fun kart. We had all started to kart in 390cc together.
Only recently, the both of them had gotten a personal kart. A good
kart with a nicely set up chassis and a powerful Rotax Max 07 engine.

Then, at almost the last moment, we have Leo to join us.

A decision that bear fruits almost instantly. With the draw of kart,
we had the luck of getting one with a new engine. It looks good.
Not only the engine looks great, Leo had managed to walk away
with pole position with a time of 1.16.28. It is more than a second
quicker than P2 !

Off to a great start!

Obviously, with the performance of Leo in qualifying it will only
be wise for him to kart the 1st leg. We are going to have him build
us a lead before the rest of us hop on.

The start was a bit tricky, with a bit of defending to do into turn 1.
Leo managed well. His experience and skill in karting racing for
almost 2 years had been prominent and displayed. He stayed ahead
of the field.
Half a lap into the race, we already see that he is pulling away (4 seconds)
The rest of us were already thinking to bring home the CHAMPION
trophy! YES!

10 mins in the race. If I'm not wrong, he is almost half a lap ahead
of the second place. WOW. What a performance. What a Kart.
What Good Fortunate!

15 mins mark, Leo had already drive all the way to the tail of the
backmarker. How I wish the race will stop there and then.
Game Over. We Win!

Moments later, it is indeed Game Over, for us! Leo pitted in out
of the blue.
The brake is up in smoke! At first thought, we assumed it is a
jammed brake.
But Leo shouted from his helmet "THROTTLE JAM!"

GEES!

Jason, the in house mechanics, started to repair and replace
the cable. It will take some time to do so, and had told us not
to wait.

KP had to hop into a new kart. We monitored his lap times,
and it was in the range of 1.22mins. Not too good. The kart
could be crap.

While in the mean time, Jason managed to repair the throttle
cable. Discussion was under way whether to call KP back in
and hop back into Kart 41. It was almost a no brainier. With
more 1 hour 30 mins to go we would be able to crawl back the
time we lost in the pits. Or so we thought!

KP pitted back in, hopped back on the 'faster' kart and off he went...
We hope for the best and we are quite very sure we wil get
back up the position. At this moment, I believed we are either
5 or 6, and 2.5 laps down from the leader!

Monitoring closely the lap times that followed, we saw KP
times were not improving. We were perplexed. In fact, he has
to defend his position aggressively and still loses it in the end.

More discussions followed between the 3 of us as Leo suggested
to put him back on the kart. My thoughts then was to have KP
for a little bit more time, perhaps he need to get used to it. Then
we were alerted that he had been overtaken again!

No choice. Leo had already made up his mind. He WANTS to
get it back on! Who can stop him?!
KP in, Leo on. Game On.

The next 20+ mins Leo did managed to put in some good laps
and we are back in the top 5. That is, coupling with some other
teams having problems with engine and/or brake.

Next up was Desmond. He will drive for about 25 mins, before
I took over the last leg. During his stint, we had move up one
position to 4th. This is mainly because the team in front of us
had a serious brake fade. They tried to pit 3 times before it can
stopped and change driver.

With about 20mins to go, it was my turn. Hopping on, I was
determined to go as fast as possible. Hoping to go one better!
I was wishfully thinking.
The tires by then were shot, and there's no power from the engine.
I also spun at Turn 4 going uphill on my every 1st lap.
After that I was been overtaken twice. I thought that's it. It all
my fault. I reckoned we were 6th then...
Unknowingly, the 20 mins passed fast enough.
Chequered flag went out and the 3 of them at the pit wall
signaled to me that we are still 4th!


It was enjoyable! At least we got back up and gotten ourselves
a trophy for our troubles!



I had captioned this pic as SpeedEmons. And they are, starting from left
Ivan, Sam, ME , Kelvin, Steven, Kenneth, Ah Tze, WeiJian, Leo, & Tony
David (seated)