Won the first race of the season!

Had a kart race this past Saturday at Moran Raceway in Beaumont, Califorina. I ran the prokartchallenge in the Premier 1 class. The Prokartchallenge series just acquired SKUSA(Super Karts USA) which is the F1 of karting. Anyways the Prokartchallenge is the regional series for SKUSA, so you have quite a few Pro drivers show up to race. I knew for a fact that I would not be competitive because I have not been in the kart for about 5 months. In addition I was going to miss Friday practice because I was at the CES show in Vegas for work. I had a meeting Friday morning with one of my clients and from there I drove straight too Beaumont for my race the next day. I reach there about 4pm, so practice is over, I find out that 2 factory drivers are racing in my class and the last years champion was also racing. They all were their on Friday and also the weekend before testing. Now I knew for a fact that there is no way I will finish top three. My best chance was finishing 4 or 5th place. I go back to the hotel nervous and try to fall asleep. After about two hours I finally pass out.

I wake up the next moring about 6 am and practice starts at 7:30 am. I practice for the first time after 5 months and things are looking pretty good. Practice finishes, then there is a half hour break and then we go into qualifying. I end up qualfying 5th, not bad, but about 7/10 off the pace. I guess its not bad for a course that is over a minute long. But I knew I had no chance with the top three guys, my best chance was fourth place. For the race we have two 10 lap heats and a 20 lap main event. So I quailifed 5th for the first heat and where you finish in the first heat is where you start the second heat and so on. In the first I am running in fourth close behind the top three until the third lap my right rear tire catches the edge of the asphalt and I go spinning in the dirt. So now I start dead last in the second heat which is 15th spot. We start the race and immediatley in one lap I pass five guys and the second lap I pass five more. Now I am up to 5th hounding the fourth place guy. He and I are having a great race. On the last lap after we passed the white flag, I am on the inside of the fourth place guy. I try to make a pass by out braking him into the corner. I hit the brakes, they lock up and I go spinning into the dirt again. I am back to the end of the grid again for the main event.

We start the main event and I am in 13th spot. Green light is on and a way we go. Again I pass five guys in the first lap and pass another three the next lap. Now I back up to fifth fighting for fourth with the same guy. We are racing hard with each other, every time I have a clean pass, he would protect his line. Finally on lap 9, I pass him nice and clean. Once I passed him, I went after third place. I was closing on third place and can see him not to far away. So I push harder and every lap he got closer and closer. After 15 laps in, I see him spin and end up in the dirt. Now I am in third and first and second are no where to be found. So I pull back a little to make sure I finish in third. There was no reason for me to push hard to make up ground on first and second. They were five laps left and I was just cruising along making sure I don't make any mistakes. I see the white flag and then the next lap the chequered flag. I raise my hand up in air estatic that I finished on the podium. I pull up to the pits and I don't see first and second place finishers. I get out of the kart and official comes up to me and says I won the race. Apparently first and second took each other out 10 laps into the race. I couldn't believe it, I was in shock. After what happened today, how the hell did I win. I didn't even think about winning, my only concern was finishing the race. So now I lead the championship and now I am motivated to win it. I hope some of you can come and see my next race which is at California Speedway on Feb. 11.

 

Thanks.

 

Actually Dough and Wayne were running a different class Spec1, which are Honda spec engines. Wayne and Doug were out there along with Jeff Litteral. Great guys, good friends of mine, but I know what you mean. It would have been hilarious to see them take each other out.

 

Thanks guys. I will let you know how the season turns out.

Vivek