Last week, Eric called up asking if I wanted to join him and some of his mates over at Sunshine for a day on the tracks.
Eric: “Go Kart?”
Adam: “When?”
Eric: “Saturday.”
Adam: “Where?”
Eric: “Sunshine. This circuit called AceKarts”
Adam: “How much?”
Eric: “Its $XX. We get an hour on the track!”
Adam: “Who’s going?”
Eric: “Friends from Maritius. About 12 of us.”
It definitely sounded like heaps of fun. I haven’t gone go-karting in years!
Having done nothing spontaneous in the last 6 months or so, I gave him the thumbs up the following morning.
Saturday came sooner than I expected. Having gone out for Moog’s birthday party the night before, waking up Saturday morning didn’t come with much ease.
Thankfully we didn’t need to be at the circuit ’til 2:30 in the afternoon.
Both Eric and I were the last ones to arrive at the circuit. As I was introduced to Eric’s friends, you didn’t need to be Patrick Jane to read the eager excitement on everyone’s faces.
At once, we were sent into the briefing room for some… err briefing.
But before we could enter the room to be brief, everyone had to be breathalized. According to the sign, there is !zero alcohol tolerance.
Thankfully I was as sober as a judge.
So was everyone else.
Well, almost everyone.
One guy caught a reading of 0.023.
Poor bloke, he had to chug bottles of Gatorade and water to try and lower his breathalyzer reading before the race.
We were given important safety instructions and tips on how to drive a go-kart.
“To turn left, turn the steering wheel left. To turn right, turn the steering wheel right.”
OMG. Have I been driving cars all wrong this whole time?!
The brief took about 10 minutes.
Then we were sent to the next room to pick up our balaclavas, helmets and gloves.
Lock and loaded.
We were given 3 rounds to race.
First round was the qualifying stages.
This was basically a time trial race. Everyone was given the opportunity to clock in their best lap possible.
I got the 3rd best time in the qualifying round! Yay me.
The Semi-Finals & Finals were to take place following each other.
Each racer was given a starting position based on their ranking results from the previous round. This meant I got to start in 3rd position for the semis.
The Semis & Finals were 15 minutes each.
The final two rounds were no longer time-trials. Instead the results were purely based on the racers position at the end of the race.
And once again, we were off! I was so focused that all I remember thinking about on the race was to overtake anyone who was infront of me.
It didn’t matter if I was overlapping him or if someone was approaching me from behind. I just had to get infront.
A couple of spin outs, one warning sign and multiple overlaps later, and the race was done!
The final results were…
.
.
.
I came in fourth. Just short of the glorious podium.
It would’ve been nice if they could’ve put a chair just next to the podium to indicate fourth place.
I was overall quite happy with my results. Nash was the overall winner.
Next time I’m gonna have to make sure I have some mushrooms, red shells and banana peels prepared.