6hr Endurance Kart Race, Class Winner

[ldstang50]

A friend of mine and I entered a 6hr endurance go kart race yesterday at On-track karting in Wallingford, CT(indoor karting). For those of you unfamiliar with it, and are local you really need to stop by. Great facility and good times.We were hooked up with Jose Rogers as our third driver, giving all of us about 2hrs of total driving time. Mandatory 11pit stops and 2 fuel stops. The first and last 45min of the race are raced in the dark with headlights mounted on the karts. Qualifying is one lap for one driver of the team. I qualified very poorly, 5th out of 10 teams, more than a full second off the top three guys. The classes are broken down to GT-pro and GT1. We were GT1, GT-pro is a team that consists of 2 or more drivers who are league or VIP members. To make matters even worse, we are moved to the back of the field at the start because one of our drivers was late for the drivers meeting.I started the race under darkness, I have to pick my way through traffic for the first 20 or so laps. 10 laps in, the battery to my headlight dies, so now I have to catch up to people under darkness and let them know I'm behind them by bumping, instead of just flashing my light before hand. Finally after 45min they start turning the lights back on. I had gotten into a grove and lowered my person best lap time from a 36.6 (in the light a few months before) to a 36.4, in complete darkness and moved us up to 3rd overall. I never got lapped, which early in this race is a good thing.Jose jumped in for the next stint and laid down some blazing times. Bob jumped in and was a bit slower. But the more we drove, the faster we got. Later on Jose would run a 36.0, Bob a 36.2 and me a 36.3. Bob and Jose had all their driving time in the light. I took the last sting which was run under even darker conditions than the first stint. I jumped in with 45min to go and was sitting 3rd overall and first in class. When the checkers flew we were two laps out of the lead but two laps ahead of the nearest kart in class, giving us the class win.Bob and I were very surprised to see who good we did. The guys that won are the two fastest guys there period, putting down times under 36seconds and for us to finish within 2laps of them after 6hrs really says something. We were less than a lap out of 2nd overall.For our efforts, we received a 5ft trophy for winning our class and medals. Pics below

Driver Change, me getting in

Getting buckled in

Getting pushed off

Bob turn 4

Jose turn 11

Winners, me on left, bob middle, jose right

[Watermelonwarrior]

Thats awesome. Thanks for sharing. My brother and I were pretty close to buying a shifter kart a couple months back.

[jaym5k]

Realy fun stuff, I recently had a yz125 6 speed shifter kart over the last summer. Ran at the outdoor track at f1 boston outdoors in bridgewater. Speeds of 100+ mph all day. Never realy got into the indoor stuff.