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  • Lucas Ellingham

Whilton Mill Jan 2017


2nd Honda meeting at Whilton with the last being probably 6 months ago.

1st time out on the Zip Vanquish so hoping for good things.

The team had been testing on Friday so I had some catching up to do as the other drivers in the team are all regulars at Whilton and had the benefit of the extra day dialling into the new 2017 LS2 Dunlop tyres.

Saturday testing proved to be hard work as dialling in the chassis was taking longer than usual but we persisted and by close of play felt we had got a workable setup for race day.

Sunday and a very cold night but a dry, if slippery, track.

Sensibly the race was classed as a dry meeting so it was out for practice to see how the setup worked......out of the pits and all looked promising being 2nd quickest to my teammate and only 1 10th off.

Out for the 1st heat and time to see how things work here....made a good start and worked my way up making progress from P13 up to P3 when after a restart the new tyres let me down and I lost places to P9 finishing the race in P7, not great but not too bad and felt good.

Heat 2 and started in P4 so hoped we could maximise the front grid position and bank a result....lights out and off into P1. Gradually my teammate Irfan hunted me down and went past into Christmas corner so I decided to push away from the pack with him.

The theory worked and we broke away and then with 3 laps to go Irfan suffered a mechanical failure and went off track. This left me out front with 2 laps left to ensure I brought it home and didn't let the pursuing pack catch me.....job done.

Heat 3 and a back row start on P26. A lot of traffic to get through and unfortunately ran out of time to get to the front but making up 21 places to finish P5 was great.

The strong heats meant I was on Pole for the final which was fantastic bearing in mind I don't visit this track much and there are many of the Super 1 grid who race here regularly.

So plan for the race was to get away with my teammates and win the race at the end...lights out and away..level with the P2 driver into turn 1 and half way round he decides to smash into me sending me off at the first corner...so much for plans.

Now it's a matter of tracktime and experience, use the time available to try to get to the front and if not learn as much as possible about racing this track.

I get my head down and go to work and start making my way past other drivers....clock was ticking and again ran out of time to catch the front drivers finally finishing in P12.

Whilst the final result may not show it Monday morning left me feeling upbeat about how the weekend went, new kart went well, I raced well and felt strong against the locals....tick in the box for this weekend 😃

Big thanks to ARC Audio Visual for funding, Zip Karts for the chassis RPM Engines for the power and Global Karting.

Karting Magazine Report:


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