EKL Round 2 Ellough Park

A virtually new line up for the knights made the trip to Ellough park, due to a struggle getting the team sorted it was a very inexperienced line up. How ever the team put in plenty of good performances during the races. Drivers were Team Captain Luke Austin, Ian Williams, Richard Olive and Shane Mansbridge.

The Heats 
Williams was the 1st driver to do a heat and an unfortunate kart selection ended up with him struggling and eventually got knocked off the track but still finished a respectable 13th. Next up was Austin Unfortunately as Ian finished 13th this resulted in the kart being lined up on the grid in the spot Austin was due to start from, so another struggle how ever gaining 4 places from 18th and managed a 14th place.

The next 2 heats were the debut in any serious karting competition for Olive and Mansbridge. Both drove very well and battled for places towards the back but keeping in touch with the field and showed promise for later heats.

As the heats went on the results started to get better. With Williams getting from 17th to 6th and 12th to 8th in his remaining races. Austin played the waiting game in his 2nd heat and took the lead on the final lap resulting in the Knights 1st heat win! The following heat was also a strong performance amongst the 2 red flags making his way from 19th to 3rd! With the pace to have won the race.

Shane and Richard were very much placed at the back throughout all of their races but were getting more and more competitive as the heats went on with Richard getting a high of 18th place and them both only being just over a second off the lead pace. Not bad for their 1st ever races!

Race of Champions 
Ian Williams won the rock paper scissors competition for him to be selected to take part in this race. A strong performance in qualifying put him 5th on the grid and in the race got the teams hopes up when he was running in a strong 2nd place. How ever loosing ground towards the end of the race, he finished 5th and the end result was that Teamsport Titans were just out of reach of anyone!

Endurance 1 
We put Shane and Richard out in the 1st endurance race. They continued their strong performance with Richard taking the start and Shane doing the later stint. 40 minutes solid in a kart isn’t easy to do when you haven’t done much karting in the past so they both drove great races and finished 18th

Endurance 2 
Luke and Ian went out for the 2nd endurance Luke taking the start and making the most of the 5th place on the grid jumping up to 3rd and running in 2nd for most of the stint, until the front left wheel snapped off the kart at the end of the main straight. This resulted in a sprint from one end of the circuit to the pit lane which was at the other end of the track where Ian had got a spare kart ready and was just waiting for the front panel so he could go out and start the 2nd stint. When Ian joined the track the team was down in 18th place and after some fantastic driving Ian got the team back up to 10th place, which we were very happy with.

Summary
A good weekend which we had the aim of Damage limitation due to the regular drivers not being available to race. So to pick up as many points as we did was fantastic. Ian put in a performance worthy of a regular spot in the team if he can find the time to join us again. Richard and Shane also drove good races and with a bit of work both showed the promise of being front running drivers.