You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
On Saturday afternoon I was bored and decided to enter a 40 minute kart race at Daytona in Milton Keynes. I've been a few times before but hadn't driven there since last summer so I wasn't expecting much.
10 minute qualifying session at the start, with everyone positioned on the grid for the 'proper' start based on fastest lap during qualifying. I started 4th on the grid but moved up to 3rd after the first corner and stayed there pretty much the whole 40 minute race.
Anyway long story short, I came away with my first podium finish, coming 3rd out of 26 karts (maximum allowed is 30 so it was nearly a full grid) and got a chunk of glass to mark the occasion!
[img] 
[/img]
I remembered just before the race that I had my GoPro in the car still from my mountain biking trip the other weekend, so I slapped it on the helmet as most of them have GoPro mounts attached.
Race highlights below, there were plenty more bits I could have included but I had to be very picky with over an hour of footage to choose from!
Looks ace!
Well I was thinking I've never seen lights on parts before. Mmm would have been a tad interesting towards the end of the race without rear lights me thinks. Anyway, good effort how many corners could you take flat?
Good day out!
Well I was thinking I've never seen lights on parts before. Mmm would have been a tad interesting towards the end of the race without rear lights me thinks. Anyway, good effort how many corners could you take flat?
Luckily the track floodlights do most of the work, the lights on the karts are more so you can see when karts are coming up behind you!
Using the below track map for reference, I take corner 1, everything between 7 and 8 and the first part of turn 9 flat and that's pretty much on the limit. Everything else you have to brake for as the karts are pretty quick once they get moving!
[img] 
[/img]
An 40 minute race? My forearms were ready to drop off after 15 minutes!
That looked like great fun.
Were you using any kind of gimbal or physical stabilizer or is that all in-camera? We've just got a Hero Black but it's yet to be used in anger.
An 40 minute race? My forearms were ready to drop off after 15 minutes!That looked like great fun.
Were you using any kind of gimbal or physical stabilizer or is that all in-camera? We've just got a Hero Black but it's yet to be used in anger.
40 minutes is probably about as long as I'd want to do in 1 'stint', could probably stretch to an hour if it was an endurance type race.
Nope, just the standard GoPro stabilisation with the camera mounted to my helmet!
Seems the Hero5 Black stabilisation is getting me some good comments as people keep asking on my mtb videos if I'm using a gimbal too!
Daytona MK is a good track. I did an arrive & drive there ages ago with a mate when the Daily Mail (I know....) where doing activity vouchers.
We got 2x30 minute sessions for £30!!
Last kart event I did was for a mate's stag do at Capital Karts in London - bloody long indoor track. It's a decent track, but quite narrow & hard to overtake on; someone being even semi-defensive is very hard to overtake, unless they are dog slow.
A mate of mine used to work for Daytona kart. Not sure if they are still there, but the indoor tracks at White City & Park Royal are very good.
Do they still have the briefing video with Dani Behr & Shane Ritchie??
Blimey an hour of driving for £30 is good value at any venue, that's less than half price at Daytona though!
Yer indoor tracks to tend to be very nary/complex to get more track length into a small footprint, Daytona by contrast has a great mist of slow tight corners and long sweeping ones.
Current intro video is done by Martin Brundle, not sure how long it's been him on there though! (at least a couple of years as that's when I first went).
Looks fun. However, feel a little cheated after seeing Daytona in the thread title.
Was expecting this kind of thing...
[img] 
[/img]
When I went to Daytona I heard the instructor say you could take turn 1 flat out but missed the bit where he said "in the dry". It was a damp evening so I ended up going backwards over the kerb at high speed 😳
Nice! Nice driving, nice circuit and nice karts and an evening race! We don't get things like that down [url=
Looks fun. However, feel a little cheated after seeing Daytona in the thread title.Was expecting this kind of thing...
Haha, the name does make it sounds a lot more exotic that Milton Keynes, must help their Google results though!
When I went to Daytona I heard the instructor say you could take turn 1 flat out but missed the bit where he said "in the dry". It was a damp evening so I ended up going backwards over the kerb at high speed
I went there in the rain once (I reiterate, ONCE), thinking how bad could it be. I think a rudder would have been more useful than the steering wheel, anything more than jogging pace and the steering was non-existent. Ended up drifting round the entire track and went of more times than I could count!
Nice! Nice driving, nice circuit and nice karts and an evening race! We don't get things like that down here.
Looks good! I quite fancy doing something a bit more hardcore when the weather gets warmer, someone on Twitter recommended I enter a race with these guys www.oekc.co.uk
You can rent a pro race kart for a day, £1000 split between (recommended) 4 drivers. Which gets you your own mechanic, tyres, kart, race fee, 60 minute practice, 15 minute qualifying and then a 4.5 hour endurance race! 8)