Kit Time

To race in the national kart championships you have to have the right kit. Helmets have to have either a blue or red BSI sticker or are Snell approved and your suit gloves and boots have to meet the relevant safety standards, these vary across different types of racing. For our short cicuit racing I decided on Alpinestar for the clothing and Simpson for the helmet as these makes offer decent value for money while maintaining a decent safety level along with good quality

So after getting up one saturday morning we decided to head for Castle combe to pay a visit to Merlin Motorsport. After a fairly uneventful 2 hour journey we arrived and I started trying on various suits. John (the salesman) was very helpful and eventually we settled on the Aplinestar K-MX3 light kart suit along with the Alpinestar Tech K-1 kart boots and Alpinstar Tech K-1 gloves, all shown in the picture to the left. Anyway, after leaving several hundred pounds lighter we headed for home, this is where the fun starts as the heavens literally opened. Suffice to say the motorway traffic slowed to a crawl and a 2 hour journey turned into a 5 hour slog. But everything was ok, Lisa ( my girlfriend) managed to fall asleep, even with all that noise from the beating rain, and so arrived home fresh as a daisy, unlike yours truly who ended up with a severe headache and some very dodgy vision from concentrating.

Anyway, all over now, bring on the racing

In The Beginning

Right……well where to start? The beginning is where we are at the moment so I guess this is as good a place as any.

I used to race Direct Drive Karts in the middle east when I was growing up and when I found out that a good friend of mine, Roy Beal of Auto Italiana fame, raced in the 250 National championships my interest was immediately aroused. Unfortunately the minute we got onto the subject I could feel my girlfriends eyes burning into the back of my neck, it wasn’t a good feeling, I could feel the sofa calling me.

A few weeks later Roy and I came up with a plan, you will see it unfold over the rest of this paragraph. I took my girlfriend down to the championship race over the last weekend of July under the pretence of taking her for a nice day out in the sunshine with the dog. She seemed to enjoy sunning herself (and laughing at us) in the pits while we argued about (and changed) sprocket sizes and maxing the revs out before the end of the straight. Anyway the end of the day came and it didn’t seem like she had changed her mind so Roy and I resorted to the last thing we could think of, bullying her into it. And guess what, nope, it didn’t work. Now by this stage I was getting the feeling she was only saying no to be bloody minded and this was confirmed to me when we got home and I heard these immortal words ‘Sweetheart, if you really want to do it then go for it’. Well I was beaming from ear to ear and it was at this point that she stated that she was going to say yes ages ago but as we had ganged up on her she thought it would be fun to frustrate us……….women!!

Anyway, I have now bought (still in the process of paying for) Roy’s old Kart and my girlfriend has decided to buy me the new helmet, suit, gloves and boots for my birthday, isn’t she great. (She had better read this) So next stage is getting my licence, but to do this I need to post a lap time (amongst other things) that is within a certain percentage of a decent lap time down at Dunkeswell. Lots of practice coming up I feel, mainly to get used to running a Kart with a gearbox.

Right, time to go now but I will keep you updated……….

Oh and Hello to all fellow Alfisti and a big thank you to Roy Beal of Auto Italiana in Exeter and of course to my loving girlfriend.