EKL Round 3 Clay Pigeon

The strongest line up to date for the knights took to the track at Clay Pigeon. The team consisted of Luke
Austin, Ian Williams and James Fitchew. Taking his debut in the series was the very experienced Will ‘’El
Bandito’’ Dendy. With this line up the Knights looked to secure their best result to date.

The Heats
In the heats James went out 1st starting 11th and getting a strong start he got away from a huge gaggle of karts
to get his best finish in the championship with a 7th place! Starting with a top 10 was a great way to start.
His following 2 races he finished 15th and 15th both races were from the back of the grid so gain a fair few
positions.

Will Dendy was next up and managed to record 3rd place in his 1st race before getting a duff kart in his 2nd race
and only finishing 20th in the final race he showed a strong race craft with speed to battle through the pack
into the top 10.

Luke Austin was next up. Starting 14th with the mind set of ‘’stay out of trouble’’ he gained 10 places and
finished a very strong 4th place, race 2 starting 16th he once again finished 4th Gaining 12 places. In his final heat
he started 4th and finished 3rd but 2nd place was under weight so he got promoted to 2nd 3 very strong races
has seen him jump up to 11th in the drivers championship

Ian Williams was the last driver to do his 1st heat. Starting 2nd he maintained that and finished 2nd then
immediately following that race he started 26th battled through assisted by the red flag to a high of 2nd place!
Before being knocked wide and eventually finishing 5th but that was still a gain of 21 places over 10 laps!

Race of Champions
Will Dendy was chosen to do the race of champions this time as he had shown strong race pace and a very
strong race craft. He qualified 5th and immediately at the start of the race got up to 2nd place. A small bit of
contact however resulted in kart being damaged and the handling going to pot he slowly fell down the order
and out of contention. It was a shame to be running so high and then loose out because of contact but that’s
racing. We will win the cash next time!

Endurance 1.
The line up for endurance 1 was James Fitchew and Luke Austin. It was clear that James was the faster over
a single lap so he was chosen to take the start and put it P5 on the grid! So a very strong start followed
by a strong 1st stint resulted in the team pitting in 6th place. Luke then took over and got up to 4th place
momentarily before loosing out to Teesside Tigers and finishing 5th. This is the teams highest endurance finish
to date.

Endurance 2.
The stronger line up for endurance 2 was Will Dendy and Ian Williams. Because its quicker to put lead into
the kart than it is to take it off Will did the qualifying and started the race. Despite only being 0.1s slower
than Fitchews time in the 1st endurance Dendy only managed to put it 15th on the grid clearly this endurance
was going to be much tougher than previous. He maintained his place and showed a great level of endurance
picking off places slowly as other drivers began to struggle. Leaving him in clear air for a few extra laps before
swapping to Ian proved beneficial as Ian came out of the pits in 9th place and continued from Wills strong
performance to finish 8th place just hundredths of a second off of 7th place. A very strong performance by the
team!

Summary
The team had clearly shown its pace this weekend and well over half of the races were in the top 10 which is
fantastic. We were rewarded with a 3 place gain in the championship to 8 th place. We also finished 4th overall
on the day which is the best result todate!