Social Race 3 - Full Throttle Raceway
Located in Stourbridge, this track is a staple of UBMRC with us having raced here for years. As the name suggests, you spend most of the lap at full throttle with lap time being made up in the heavy braking zones, as well as how well you can control the kart going along the flat out rollercoaster section that sees you sweep up and then straight back down a blind apex ramp.
This was the first social race of the year to use the individual sprint format with the drivers keen to prove their speed racing for themselves for the first time. Drivers were allocated into random groups with each group having a sprint race, followed by a reverse grid race with the top drivers (in terms of points) advancing to the A final. The groups were as follows:
Group 1 - Mark, Josh White, Qincheng Li, Priyanka Patel, Ric Wong, Noah Goodman, Oliver Morris, Harjot Sahota and Spencer Staley
Group 2 - Ben Boros, Sarah Smith, Rory Smith, Sam Harrison, Vaclav Basta, Tegan Reynolds, Joshua Read, Bartosz Swedziol and Ed Bell.
Group 3 - Max Wade, Aaron Johnson, Jamie Thornton, Ben Horne, Oscar Leahy, Toby Johnson, Harriet Kearsey, Laura Heester and Zac Weitzkorn.
Group 4 - Ismaail Khoyrattee, Nathan Styles, Fraz Khan, Alex Wilson, Marcus Hesketh, Khalil Ibrahim, Oliver Evans and Daniel James Sheppard.
The heats went as expected with the experienced drivers filtering their way to the front in their efforts to get enough points to qualify them for the A final. All drivers did well to keep things very clean and looking at the lap times, there wasn't a lot that separated drivers from the different finals. It ended up coming down to how quickly you could overtake as well as the luck of your group. For example, Nathan and Vaclav set two of the fastest laps of the day, but due to Nathan getting stuck behind Marcus in his heat and Vaclav being in the same heat as two of our best drivers Rory and Ben, they were unable to make the A final. It’s these margins that make social races so popular. They are as serious or as casual as you like.
The D final was up first which saw a triumphant Ed claim victory and the fastest lap in a drive that never looked in doubt. Oscar and Tegan rounded out the podium with all drivers doing well and having a great time.
Our C final featured 9 drivers who were all very similar in pace with there being no runaway winner here. In the end, experience prevailed and Sarah (who would later race for us in the BUKC) claimed victory followed by Joshua (who claimed the fastest lap) and Sam in 3rd.
Marcus was on pole for the B final but was overtaken by Nathan in the opening laps after an ambitious lunge into the final corner, Nathan looked to be driving away to a comfortable victory until he came around the blind apex down the ramp and was met by Aaron who was stopped on track, facing wrong way on the apex. Contact with Aaron and the barrier was made and the red flag was shown which neutralised the race and saw all gaps close up. When we got racing again, Nathan still claimed victory but it ended up being tight to Vaclav (who claimed the fastest lap) with Marcus finishing 3rd.
The uber-competitive A final featured Ismaail starting on pole in a race that saw Ismaail go five wide though the final corner with Ismaail questioning the validity of some of the moves that saw him lose out to finish 5th in the race. A race long battle between Rory and Ben saw the lead change multiple times with the decisive move coming in the final corner - seemingly the best overtaking opportunity on track - as Rory boldly laid claim to 1st place and didn’t relinquish the lead from there. Ben finished 2nd with Max claiming 3rd to cap off an excellent day of racing.
Our thanks go out to Full Throttle Raceway for hosting an excellent event as usual, kart parity is phenomenal at this circuit. As well as the Birmingham Bullman for providing us with quality refreshments, as well those whose effort made the day possible.
